Abnormality with Naegleria, Soul Remnants, and Soul Annihilation [Ralph's, Worcester, 6/7/2012]

It was a short cycle time to come off the Tuesday gig and head out for another midweek show, but this night had the choice of two release shows.  The bill here was a little more compelling, overall, than Sonic Pulse's shindig at O'Brien's, and not only was this probably my one chance to see Abnormality before going overseas (since they were dragging out to LVDF over the next two weeks, and long tours generally have a negative effect on frequency of local shows immediately afterwards), it also didn't involve the characteristic hike.  I screwed up and left my gear at home when I went to work, but managed to get things sorted in time to buzz north, grab my rig and a bite to eat, then head south and west, arriving with a couple minutes to spare and grab a beer before the bands started up.

Soul Annihilation [5/7]
I hadn't seen this band yet, and the name resemblance to Soul Remnants, also on this bill, had caused a few raised eyebrows going in.  They were pretty good, though, putting out a decent set of functional, competently-delivered black-death metal somewhere between Belphegor and Sacramentum, but of course like all my analogies, this one runs out of steam on a lack of explicit touch points to either band.  There is definitely room for further development, to make some of the riffs stick more, but Soul Annihilation is still a fairly young band (Kunjan turned 21 on this gig), and if they continue to stick around, there's no reason that they wouldn't be able to make that step up.

Sean is 3/6 in black metal's T1.  This reference would drop me down the bottomless abyss of nerdery if I wasn't in the depths already.

Soul Remnants [6/7]
This was, to some degree, the set that Soul Remnants has been getting around to delivering for the last six months.  Whether it was the occasion or just the natural development of playing with and writing and recording a new record with the members who weren't in Chopwork, this performance really took what they've been doing lately to that next level, showing off their reinvention of NWOSDM from first principles.  The idea of blending melodics and themes from hardcore and grind into first-wave Swedish death inheriting from Carcass has been done before (most prominently, 20 years ago in Gothenburg), but the way that Soul Remnants is doing it, not so much; over the whole course of this tight, diverse set, there was very little that explicitly echoed other bands.  That new record is definitely going to be one to look out for, especially as it's still not done yet, and the band has shown pretty consistent improvement throughout the process.

Tom swirls his leads together on a vintage neon Ibanez.

It was probably in here that I did most of my merch; two CDs from Abnormality (the shirt came later) and a CD and a bunch of stickers from Naegleria for export.  I was going to try and take some stuff off Abnormality as well, but you don't do that to a band just about to hit the road; as much good as I think I can do passing out stuff overseas, more good is done when people see a band, get into a band, and take free stickers home to paste on their friends' stuff.  Once that's worked itself out over the 6000 or so total road miles between here and Vegas, I'll see what I'm able to do with what little may be left.

Naegleria [5.5/7]
As before, Naegleria continues to be all about slams.  Said slams remain huge, though still not quite at the level of Dysentery or Composted, even if Joel's shirt choices and some of the less serious lyrical topics seem to have the band with one eye on the latter's throne.  Even without that consideration, this was an intense and highly enjoyable set of pounding death metal, and the assembled crowd definitely started to get into it, even if the amount of movement wasn't quite up to what the band would've liked to see.

When as big as Joel you are, rock a pink unicorn shirt at metal shows you can also.

Abnormality [6.5/7]

Ogle bait.  Not Malika, you fucking perverts, Ben's Kramer 7x36. :drool:

Abnormality had a few tech issues on this one, and in a few spots let the intensity fall between songs, but in some ways this is a natural consequence of playing this kind of music, with all the demands it puts on musicians mentally and both them and their gear physically.  The other side of this is that the band certainly got that intensity punched back up in a hurry when they hit into the next song, and the material on offer was flat stunning.  Most of this set was pulled from ...Hive Mind, and on track after track, the band slayed with the same tightness, precision and ceaseless violence live as they do on disc.  On the road over the next weeks, they'll either tighten this up for foreign audiences, who will get hit even harder, or they won't, and scene heads across the Route 66 stripe will just have to be satisfied with being floored by a performance merely as good as this rather awesome offering.  The floor got extremely turbulent and stayed that way throughout most of the set, but most of the violence, even so, was pouring down out of the cabs.

Eventually, Abnormality had to close up and hit the road, and I headed out in the other direction, making a decently smooth ride before getting jammed up in a pea-soup fog going through Danvers.  Somehow, I didn't run into anything, and I was able to cycle up relatively quick for work the next day...and then the Euros and "WDF" on the weekend to push this writeup further out.

Summoning Hate with Untombed, Scalpel, Soul Remnants, and Forced Asphyxiation [O'Brien's, Allston, 5/18/2012]

Again I had the day off, and misread the start times on this Covan benefit, which led to me getting in about an hour ahead of the start, which I spent leaning against the outside wall, trying to shed heat.  It worked only intermediately well, and I was glad to be able to get in and at least get a beer waiting for the bands to start.  O'Brien's is seldom cool inside, but with most of the crowd not in yet, it wasn't in full sauna form.

Forced Asphyxiation [5.5/7]
For those keeping score, perhaps in anticipation of the CL final the next day, this one finished Weed 3:2 Other Stuff ("Weed" is still obviously the home team for this band, trolololol).  For those more interested in how the band was actually playing than on counting the prevalence of lyrical subjects, this was another strong, sharply-finished set in line with how they've been playing lately: strong, brutal, non-slamming death metal that on this exposure came off as highly reminiscent of 1992-vintage Hypocrisy.  This gig, both the bands that played and those that didn't (Parasitic were initially on, but had to cancel, and Malika despite organizing it didn't book her main band), shows that Forced aren't quite at the apex of NEDM yet, but the development and raw power manifested in this performance are carrying them in that direction.  Straight killer.

Forced inflicting some "Blunt Forced Trauma" on the audience.

Soul Remnants [5.5/7]
This set saw some progression from Soul Remnants as well, which was somewhat unexpected; their new stuff, from the record that they're currently working on, remains significantly inspired by At The Gates as per their older material, but weaves in a few new twists as well.  The band is still in the process of setting themselves apart both from their influences and from other bands drawing on those springs, but the separation is definitely coming, and that new record, when they finish it, is definitely going to be one to watch out for.  Here, they acquitted themselves well despite being both the most melodic of the five bands and the farthest, influence-composition-wise, from Decapitated on offer, getting the now-swollen crowd around and moving down front.

Mitch roaring away.

Scalplel [5/7]
This gig was intentionally booked to bring together as many strands of NEDM as possible, and if this is New England, there has to be a slam representative.  Scalpel filled the role admirably, and with a fair degree of originality, working slam content through more traditional death metal structures.  Their brand of slam isn't the most fully-developed yet, but this is a really young band, and if they can continue to develop this style further, they're going to be one to look out for.

Scalpel flat smashes it.

Untombed [6/7]
Two important lineup notes from this: first, Untombed has changed members again, and is now even closer to having all members having once played in Summoning Hate.  Second, it may look on first glance like they've gone away from that "goal" by changing vocalists, as Dave, in a job-related shock horror move, has cut off his famous dreads.  Take a moment of silence if you like, we're not going anywhere.

.....

The hair amputation fortunately didn't affect the music at all; Untombed have done better sets than this, but this one was cleanly balanced despite pulling in a variety of directions, slamming and grooving by turns, for a total effect probably as strong as I've seen from the band since they went to two full-time vocalists.  "Bloodstained World" was an especially violent standout here, but this whole set was damn impressive, even following on what had been a pretty damn impressive gig to this point.

The lighting is so bad that the only thing you can see in this alleged picture of Untombed is the reflection off Dave's cueball.

Summoning Hate [6/7]
Having traveled through most of the available styles of New England death metal, Summoning Hate brought things back around to where they started, closing out the night with a long, strong set of traditional brutality flavored with more and better-presented melodics than I can recall hearing from the band in a while.  As with Untombed, this wasn't quite an all-time high, but it was a killer set that put a fitting capstone on a killer gig, to what was still at that point a packed house.

Milo introduces "Infierno de Dante".

At the end, though, Summoning Hate finished up, and I picked up a shirt off Untombed -- if you see a design from this band that you like, get it bought, their production runs appear to be wicked small, and they will run out of your size -- as well as some stickers for export, and incidentally another copy of their demo, before heading back across the bridges.  As the night before, the extract from there was pretty simple, and despite the hole I'd ended up putting in my foot, I was in decent shape for the Morne show the next night.  Then the CL final went to extra time, and then to penalties, and I got back home too late and too blasted to drive in.  After that, work and family commitments delayed this writeup and caused me to miss Negura Bunget and then Sexcrement; there's some bookkeeping coming, and then hopefully I can get back out to some damned shows.

Hekseri with Soul Remnants, Cythraul, and Worms In Women and Cattle [PT-109, **REDACTED**, 8/26/2011]

First off, apologies to those who had shows on 8/18; I ended up missing all of them through a combination of exhaustion from coming back and going on call a week early. Seriously, there were like seven shows in greater Boston on this date, which is a continuing argument for the scene here being as good or better than the next contender.

This one, though, I was done the on-call shift and on full power, so after loading up after work with essential supplies, it was down into the city and over the back roads to the location-blacked-out-as-per-prior-diktats. I was early and with improperly-sized bills, which caused Meg no little grief, but I was able to get in and set up, and also hand over to Larissa the Voivod live set that I'd been holding for like a month. I apparently ran into Meg indirectly at Party.San as well, likely in the fugue state of either Belphegor/1349 or Watain, darkness and disorientation being at fault for me (at least) not making a positive ID at the time. Cheers!

As per normal DIY expectations, WIWC took some time setting up, but did get going a little after the designated start.

Worms In Women and Cattle [5/7]
WIWC presented a cool take on third-wave black metal as it's come to be in the States, not burying their indie antecedents but also never allowing them to overwhelm the traditional elements. The result was something resembling a recital, through that proverbial darkened glass, of the first two Burzum records. This was cool, but maybe wore a little by the end, the band though definitely has the passion and commitment, as shown here, to take this forward, and it'll be cool to see how they resolve that great contradiction of third-wave BM, to diversify without destroying themselves.

It was probably in here that I had to go downstairs and hit the head, in the process discovering that the **REDACTED** bathrooms, male and female alike, were completely out of toilet paper of equivalent substitutes, which was a lot worse for the women waiting to potentially raid the men's room for TP than it was for us. If you go to a show here and think you may have to crap at some point, Asian rules (squat or pack your own tissues) are in effect; the alternative involves ripping flyers off the wall and having a very sure hand with a faucet.

Cythraul [5.5/7]
This was allegedly Cythraul's last show, and a hell of a way to go out. The sound was a little rough at the start, as might be expected from a five-piece with a lot of clean parts at a DIY space, but this got resolved and the band powered on. Driven principally by the Norwegian second wave with touches of Candlemass and funeral doom (at least as my poor not-listening-to-very-much-doom-at-all ears could pick out), this was a sound that we don't get a lot in this area, which makes it more of a shame if Steve's really decided to fold the tents. The lineup apart from him was completely changed up, at least as I can remember, from the last time I saw this band (admittedly aeons ago), but they did get in a partial point of continuity by bringing up a hooded, robed, and very drunk Cody for assistant vocals on some Mayhem and VON tunes towards the end of the set. Stellar outing, lots of smoke, lots of wreckage -- along every possible axis -- you could ask for little more in closing up a good band at an elite DIY space.

I spoke briefly with Cody after, inside and partially outside, and in the course of such he promised some new Bone Ritual material sometime in the short-term future. I might have gotten a deadline on that at the time, but due to front-loading my beer consumption for homebound-roadblock-related reasons, I don't remember if or when.

Soul Remnants [5.5/7]
Changing gears to death metal, Soul Remnants put up a cool, punchy, and macro-structurally melodic set about par for the course over the couple times I've seen them. Movement in the crowd accelerated a little here, though not up to the levels seen during Hekseri. For those who expected some kind of friction, or that a mostly black-metal audience wouldn't also get into it for good Carcass/ATG-influenced death metal, you need to actually go to shows once in a while, rather than getting your information from books about 20-year-old events in other countries.

As kind of expected, I got pumped for a lot of information on the Euro fests by various people over the course of the night. I answered as best I could, but somehow missed out on the critical summation of Party.San: just like this, but expanded by two orders of magnitude. Whether a DIY space with a 60:40 ratio, no pressure, and moderately-famous dudes like Dave Davidson and Colin Conway just walking in and hanging out like anyone else (ok, so Colin was also playing, but the point stands) is a smaller Party.San, or whether Party.San with every beer held in community trust, as much jury-rigging as official construction, and a community that takes absolutely everyone in is the world's biggest DIY space hangs only on what you're more familiar with.

Hekseri [6/7]
Für den Bodhrann-öffnung is gläubig Odroerir oda so schuld. Daran gewöhnt man sich nur in Deutschland. Though some people didn't get or appreciate said bit (some of the jokes cracked over it were funny, though), the band quickly got the audience back into it with a vicious performance of desperate witching black metal. Hekseri, at least on this outing, is not merely back in 2011, but somewhat better than they were the last time that they were active, before Megan hied off to Germany. The audience was super up for it as well, with room-spanning pits that had a habit of wiping out the mic stands, several of which were improvised anyway, but the band kept going at the heart of the chaos. Only for seven songs, if I read the setlist right, but it was a killer seven songs, and I'm pretty sure no one went home unsatisfied.

Eventually, though, that "went home" bit did have to happen; leaving my last vessel in community trust, I hiked back to my car and went back to my own country by a different route. There were a lot more people at this one than for Ash Borer; if PT-109 continues to gain in popularity, its days are surely numbered. Thus the paradox of DIY spaces (and, really, life): anything good will be gone sooner or later, so enjoy it while it lasts, and hasten its doom.

Coffin Birth with Soul Remnants, Naegleria, and Totality [Ralph's, Worcester, 6/30/2011]

Due to getting meshed in much less pre-holiday traffic than I was anticipating, I got out to Worcester pretty early and spent more time than anticipated rattling around in a nearly-empty Ralph's, moderating my beer intake. I probably could and should have found more stuff to kill time with before leaving, but fast transit is never really guaranteed, roadworks are unpredictable, and staying in the goddamn office until damned near 8 pm is soulkilling enough as it is. Regardless, people filled in presently and the bands got going.

Totality [5/7]
Totality's sound here was a little less dense than Tuesday, which maybe opened things up some; whether real or illusionary, they came off as more technical and less straightforward B-string fanning. (Not a real term, but if you watch enough 7-string death metal bands, you should understand it immediately.) The sound was also a little mangled at the start, maybe as a consequence of one of the guitarists playing directly into the PA rather than through a cab. This was a little odd, but consistent with the still odder intimation that the band had showed up in a taxi and borrowed a drumkit and the cabinets they did have from the other bands. Weird, sure, but still pretty killer, and still a band to pay attention to going forward.

At the conclusion of their set, Totality chucked a bunch of CDs into the audience rather than having them on a spindle at a table in the back. This was a little rockstar for a Metal Thursday, but more and more importantly, less effective. I picked one of them up and, unsurprisingly for a CD without a case or sleeve that was bounced off the floor and had to hang out in a jacket pocket for the rest of the night, the second of the two tracks on it was scratched pretty much to unplayability. If you want to get your music out to people, it helps if they're able to listen to it -- and when you're this good, you don't need to throw your media at your audience and risk damaging it.

Naegleria [5/7]
I hadn't heard Naegleria previously, more due to bad luck on my part than the band, as they've been around and on decent bills for a fair while now. What we got was decent, unassuming, high-powered straight-ahead slamming death metal that made up in crush whatever it gave away in originality. This is another band that I was frustrated not to be able to move around for; the lesson, for all the wee kids in the audience (i.e., anyone under 25), the lesson is to thrash as hard as you can, whenever you can, because someday your legs will call it a day on you, and you'll never be able to do so again. The rest of the crowd, though, started getting violent here, so there was no lack of people to toss back, and with the exception of "You're Gay" (probably the first time in the history of the world that people have just stood around and listened to an Anal Cunt song being played live rather than thrashing around while dodging half-bricks and broken furniture getting thrown off the stage), the violence served to complement and round out the music rather than as a necessary condition. Still a cool set, and yet another reason to get another knee brace before that Dysentery gig at the end of August.

Soul Remnants [5.5/7]
I'm not sure quite how much of a notch Soul Remnants took it up from last time; something, to be sure, but picking points between scores can get to be a real exercise in hair-splitting sometimes. Their influences from Carcass and At The Gates were probably a little more prominent here, and the venue sound really allowed it to cut through. While Soul Remnants are a lot more solid than superlative right now, there's not a lot of bands in New England doing this older style of death metal, and a solid set from a good band is still good value for your night out.

Coffin Birth [5.5/7]
Vice December, the fan made a comeback, but here, was more necessary and less stagecraft -- Ralph's gets devilishly hot in the summer just standing around in the general audience areas, let alone under the stage lights. Also as in December, Coffin Birth quickly put any peripheral silliness out of mind with a hammering set of black-death metal -- with the important difference that this was in Worcester, so on this set, you could have Crazy Dan taking things to new heights with the first instance of breakdancing noted at Metal Thursday. Whether it was intentional or he just had difficulty standing up initially after going over in the pit, it happened: I would instantly lose all credibility if I tried to make something like that up. That, even more than the usual pit action, was pretty hardcore radikvlt -- fortunately, the Morbid Angel cover that the band closed with wasn't.

At the end of the night, I was pretty well dead; fortunately, the highways were mostly empty and nearly free of egregious construction, so I blasted home in good time, then didn't finish writing this up for most of a week because holiday weekends tend to be over-strenuous for some reason. Next up is the next Metal Thursday; The Accursed dropped, but the rest of the bill is well worth it, and then it's another two shows in two days, in the which time I probably have to do a gear-out check. Just over three weeks till I hit the road.

Nachzehrer with Soul Remnants and Dethamphetamine (not Master) [O'Brien's, Allston, 3/2/2011]

Because Master dropped and I got in on what would have been early for the four-band bill, I can't really read most of the minimal notes I scrawled at the show. Good thing this is going in now rather than three months from now when it's completely forgotten.

Deathamphetamine [6/7]
It was cool to see these guys again, now realigned into a three-piece and with a different balance than they'd had as a five-piece, while still playing a bunch of the old songs as well as the new ones. As intimated, this is almost a whole different new Deathamphetamine, but this set from them was debatably the best I'd seen since their original vocalist left -- though, truth told, he did come back for a couple of songs in the middle. The influences are still all over the place, but if they can solidify this mix of death, thrash and hardcore into something strong and consistent, they're definitely going to be a band to watch again.

Soul Remnants [5/7]
Though their demo attests that they've been around for a while (and I think maybe as Chopwork for some of that time, I definitely remember that name from flyers a while back), this was the first time I'd actually seen them live. Their punchy old-school death sound was about the best match to the original headliner of the three bands that did end up showing, but at least in the current configuration, they aren't at the overall level of the other locals. Some of this is the weird balance the bill ended up with, but some of it is likely practice; they fuckin' killed it on a cover of At The Gates' "Blinded By Fear", and more time with these members and the same members (recent additions including Colin (Frozen, ex-Cannae) Conway) will probably take the current and future originals up to the same level.

It was probably in this break that Robin filled me -- and probably anyone else he passed in the crowd -- in on the reasons for the cancellation; Paul brought his whole normal Czech band over this time rather than recruiting American sidemen, and one of them got turned back at immigration. So the band went back to the Czech, allegedly without a phone call, and word was passing from hand to hand, night to night, across the country, that Master wasn't playing the next night in the next town either. How it goes....and likely a reinforcing experience for Speckmann in his decision to emigrate to the Czech a few years back.

Nachzehrer [6.5/7]
If the last show was good, this was a definite step up. The band was back at full power, fully flowing, still raw, but all the leads that were there when Alex was in the band back in their right places as well. It's difficult to see how they aren't the next metal band out of Boston at this stage; the only reasons I come up with are kind of contingent on underrating the exposure that Black Pyramid and CNV have gotten thus far. This wasn't a perfect set, but it was about peak for the band as I've seen them so far, and if it's repeated on a regular basis, you're going to also be able to see this band by you sooner rather than later.

On Master: yes, I'm bummed that they cancelled, and yes, I'm not sure that I'd've been down for a Masterless bill coming in on a Wednesday night. But I've got the flyer at least, which I did not get the last time they were around, and when I was discovering this band a decade and more ago, there was no chance that I'd see them at all in the next ten years. Death metal had moved on and Paul'd moved to the Czech. And yet here we are. Universal access to rars of every album ever made means nothing languishes out of print any more, and better scene connectivity means any legitimately good band isn't going to stay forgotten for long. Master are back to stay, and who knows, maybe even back through on tour sometime in the next five years. For now, I have that one set in '08, and the poster from this one with some scribbles on the back.

On the hike back from this one, I got pelted in the back with something. I looked back down behind me to see what it was, barely breaking stride, and saw a nearly full bottle of maple syrup. Sure, it beats the hell out of getting bottled with something frangible, but still, lolwut? Who packs along maple syrup in their van, and who, packing maple syrup in their van obviously because it's a cheap and efficient calorie vector on tours where you aren't earning any money, bungs a day and a half's rations for the whole band at some mook on the sidewalk? Just Say Ok, I guess.


After this I was on call for a whole week and then preoccupied chewing my nails about the situation at Fukushima, so no No Life, which means no accounts of the drama that, likely, everyone reading this thing is well aware of. Only this to be said: as an adopted scion of the North Shore, I could have told everyone in advance that moving part of this fest to Revere would automatically turn it into metal Jersey Shore. This is what happens when things are in Revere, and people who live south of the Route 60 interchange should really be aware of this by now.

Next gig is Woods at Metal Thursday if I don't get killed by drunks on the highway (to or from), and then I need to remember to get Agalloch tickets before dumping all my money at Armageddon Shop north....because there surely won't be enough if I try to do that in reverse order.