Worcester Death Fest [Worcester Palladium, 6/10/2012]

This might have been more accurately written "Scott Lee Finds A Way To Have 21 Mostly-Local Bands Open For Six Feet Under Tour Fest", or I could have just covered the bands I did see in the title, but the first is too long and the second is way too long, as despite continuing my tradition of not watching Six Feet Under close out festivals, I did see enough of about seventeen bands to take down concrete descriptions.  Acculturated as I am to German experience, this barely met the definition of a festival.  Festivals take place outdoors, over multiple days, and pack in a minimum average of ten bands per day.  This "fest" only met one of the criteria, but that's not been a problem in the past, and in the "goddamn everyone shows up and hangs out" department, it did capture a bit of the festival feel.

After shaking off the cobwebs of the night before -- I was on call, and therefore had to play it fine, but even a pint an hour of Guinness adds up if you keep at it for eight hours -- I organized some food and some cash and headed on out, rolling up to the Palladium, around back streets due to a weird roadblock on Major Taylor, in just enough time to stow my steel in the vehicle and hide my pen under my belt before going up to get my ticket and get processed in.  I nosed around a bit and got a CD off Totality before heading down to the main stage; the upstairs didn't look set up yet, and the nebulous rumors that I'd heard waiting in line were indicative that most of the bands I actually wanted to see would be going on sooner rather than later.

Tony (Scaphism) and Brendan (Blood of the Gods) standing by a cairn of guitar cases.  Load in first, find out when/where you're playing after.

Scaphism [5.5/7]
Despite a sparse crowd in the cavernous downstairs, Scaphism got the fest off to a good start with humor, irony, and a good performance of most of their best material.  This wasn't that long a set, but Scaphism tunes tend to be kind of short, so they got a fair few out around Tony bantering with the crowd as well as with other bands setting up on the balcony.  They handled the new space pretty well, but might have brought more energy to the upstairs with a smaller gulf between the band and the audience.  Regardless, this was a good performance, and one that started the fest off on the right foot.

Scaphism on the big stage.

Hivesmasher [6/7]
I practically never goddamn see this band, so my sample space is a little constricted.  From the last time, they've lost their keys/samples guy, but if anything picked the energy up a notch.  In some places the songs seemd to run down after about a minute and a half, but this is why I tend not to listen to grindcore in the first place.  For what they do, though, Hivesmasher are really, really good, and when they're on, in those 60- to 100-second bursts, they are dead fucking on to an extent that barely any bands in the region can stand in with them.  All around killer set.

Aaron Heinold, the secret-Azn Barney Greenway, in a rare standing-still moment.

Since the upstairs bar still wasn't open, I went downstairs to get a beer, if I recall correctly some merch, and happened to see a bit of...

Eyes of the Dead [4/7]
I had not seen this band before and did not get a positive ID on them until checking in with the running order several hours later.  They did not, in the approximately half-set sample that I got from them, do a whole lot to drive me to make that ID, or to check them out on record.  From what I heard at least, they were putting out decently-executed but ultimately replacement-level death-thrash, along old lyrical tropes that didn't do much to grab the attention either.  On festivals, you will get bands like this; decent enough to fill out the lineup in the middle of the day, but fairly interchangeable with the promoter's other options.

Midway through, I ran into Juan from Untombed, who passed along two important bits of info: 1) Spain drew with Italy in what was probably the most entertaining match of the Euros to that point and 2) Sexcrement was going on next upstairs.  I promptly changed zones; I lost a little in terms of total music seen, but getting in place to see all of Sexcrement was more important than making it to the end of EotD's set.

Sexcrement [6/7]
That decision turned out to be well-justified.  I'd missed Sexcrement's release show, but they filled a lot of that value back in, pulling most of the material in this set off the new one, which turns out, unsurprisingly, to be as sleazily slamalicious as their previous output.  There were fewer (well, at least apparently fewer) trannies around than previous, and Adam didn't get his dick out, but even when you take out the chaos that swirls around them, Sexcrement are a damn good death metal band, and they put out a pretty damn good set on this outing.

I went upstairs to the merch area to pick up the two -- as it turns out, they reissued XXX Bargain Bin -- Sexcrement discs I was short, and by the time I got the purchase done and went back down, Blood of the Gods was setting up.  By this time I was running out of bands that I wanted to see, but hadn't yet, and Untombed and Dysentery were going to be going on later downstairs, so I stuck around rather than going to sample the downstairs.

Blood of the Gods [6/7]
This decision also turned out to be correct, as Blood of the Gods took up the challenge of the space (biggest I've seen them on since Church, iirc) and smashed out a strong, diverse, and yet unified set of their bruising sludge-death.  Their crust roots are still evident, if in nothing else than the fact that they're coming at death metal from a different direction from literally every other band on this bill, but they've moved beyond that point and easy Entombed comparisons to making something new, cool, and almost completely independent.  This was probably the best set I've seen from these guys, and the trend looks to be further up from here.

So that I wouldn't miss Untombed, and also because there was music there and a set change in the upstairs, I swapped zones again, and managed to catch most of Conflagration despite not making a positive ID on tha band, again, until I finally ran across the running order.

Conflagration [4/7]
I hadn't seen this band before, and despite my general distaste for the style, I tried to give them a fair shot, but ended up still with the impression that something was just off.  To a certain degree, I could pick out that this main-sequence metallic-MAHXC band (if you don't know what that is, you apparently haven't ever been to the NEMHF) was fighting the mixing board's legendary badness, but in places, it seemed like they were fighting against their own composition and arrangements as well.  They had some good bits in a few places, but not quite enough to convince me to check out their stuff on record and to see to what degree the downstairs board was fucking them over, and to what degree I just didn't care for the music.  They had a decently appreciative crowd/mosh melee, so apparently people into this style might want to check them out, but for the auld, crabbit, and bepanzert, sets like this are more part of the price to be paid for having festivals.

After Conflagration ended, with Untombed coming up, the floor pretty much 'rotated', with its former occupants clearing out and a new cohort, self included, coming down to fill the space.  There were, obviously, more people filling in now than we'd started the afternoon off with, but there was still a fair bit of space, and I was able to get pretty well forward without great difficulty.

Untombed [5.5/7]
More than the other bands that I'd seen moving up to the big stage for the first time, Untombed seemed to struggle a little at the start, whether from the gulf down to the audience or from the different aural environment (whether actual working monitors, or the Palladium-standard mix getting mispromoted through them).  Once they got their feet under them, though, they steadily improved through the course of the set and ended in characteristically strong fashion.  They'll be playing more sets in more intimate venues in the future, but they did a good job with their shot at the big stage, and particularly with keeping the crowd involved despite the distance.

Dave whips up the crowd for Untombed.

I'd gotten a look at the running order by this point, and 'running' was definitely the operative word.  The last three non-slotted bands that I had a particular interest in were on one after the other, and I had to move pretty quick about it.

Totality [5.5/7]
The main attribute from Totality on this exposure was their relentless tightness; as noted earlier, this is an important attribute for death metal bands working their way up, but the material that was on offer in that disciplined presentation was pretty much where Totality has been since I started seeing them.  The guitar solos have improved from that sample, earning the band some extra credits, and their merch distribution off the stage comes off as slightly less rockstar, but Totality is still a band yet becoming, and not quite where they want themselves to be yet.  They're getting there, and if they can take that step up in songwriting to match their execution, they'll be that much closer.

Totality keep it tight.

Dysentery [6.5/7]
As the afternoon wore on, bands got longer sets, and more people got into the venue, making the clip-overs from one set into the start of the next longer, and travel time between the upstairs and the downstairs longer still.  I missed more of Dysentery's set than other bands that got clipped because of this, but still managed to get up relatively close and in about the action, for about 75% of a weapons-grade slam hammering.  Dysentery had played this building before, though not as I've seen them downstairs, but they commanded the large downstairs stage and decently-filled downstairs room with as much aplomb and ferocity as they would have on a run-of-the-mill O'Brien's outing.  My knees still keep me out of pits, but even just listening to the music and holding the pit edge was a pure battle; the band could hardly have been heavier if they were throwing solid rubber bricks the size of shipping containers off the stage.

The dance floor is lit up for Dysentery.

Excrecor [5/7]
Head blasted straight in half, I got into the upstairs in good time for Excrecor, who unfortunately seemed to be having an off night.  Some of it may have been down to the drum monitors, which the band called out to the venue staff as just plain not working, and which could easily have been responsible for some of the desyncs, and some of it was probably the mix, which even in the upstairs seldom gets much past 'functional' for non-nationals, but the most succinct and likely explanation is that the band just had a down set, as bands will from time to time.  Excrecor's material remains what it is, and got a decent performance here, but the band's played more enjoyable sets in the past and will do better in the future than they did on this sample.

At this point, the furious running to and fro was over, and I could spend more inter-band time either browsing the merch stacks, or as I did for most of The Summoned, getting some foods down.  Eight of the nine local openers that I was actually interested in seeing had gone on by this point, and thanks to hard going, I managed to see most of the sets for all of the eight bands in question.

The Summoned [NR]
I heard only bits and pieces of this band, around transactions for food, beer, and merch, some of which were interesting melodeath pieces, and some of which were pieces of less interesting retreaded deathcore.  In total, though, there were not enough of those pieces, nor strong enough connections between them, to make any kind of informed assessment about what the band is like, let alone how this set was on any kind of subjective level.  I did pick up a CD from them, and found a mix of styles similar to that noted, executed at about the level you should expect from a good eastern-New-England local band, but not having a complete impression of this set, I can't accurately tell how much it varied from that recorded performance or in what direction.

Nemecide [4/7]
I had heard of this band before, and seen their name around, but I hadn't actually seen them live or happened on a demo yet.  After this set, I have more of an impression of why this was the case.  Nemecide's Bostonian blend of Behemoth and Killswitch Engage was decently executed, but not especially interesting, and so completely removed from the sound and culture of the local shows that I do go to as to seem to have originated on another planet.  In a way it's good to go to festivals to see that there's such a broad range of viable bands out there, and large audiences for everyone when that range can be unified, but the opportunity to avoid bands like this and overdose on the kvlter than kvlt is why I go to Party.San....and increasingly in recent years, not to NEMHF.

As noted above, I had seen the running order by this point, and yet elected to stay put.  Some of this was due to the fact that even an average metal performance is pretty decent, and inertia is a powerful force, but part of it was the conviction that the remaining bands, upstairs and down, were pretty much of a piece, and I gained more by resting up for later than I might theoretically have been losing by running around.  It all works out in the end.

Conforza [4.5/7]
As it was, I ended up seeing the whole of Conforza's set, another first exposure to a band that I'd seen mentioned on a fair number of bills but not actually seen live before.  They got a good response from the crowd for their performance of a technically proficient deathcore set, though the reigning impression from my seat was of a sound thoroughly past its sell-by date, one that might have resonated a few years ago in the company of Ion Dissonance or Despised Icon, but in 2012 was more just echoing back.  That crowd response indicates there's still an audience for it -- it's just that I'm pretty sure I won't need to take active measures to be a part of it going forward.

The two foregoing notes should contradict any notion that I've lost rigor in score distributions, or pull punches talking about local bands.  The real reason that scores have converged as they have, and that I don't savage bands too often, is that lately I just don't see a lot of bands that I don't like.  There is little that separates Nemecide or Conforza from the national acts in their respective styles that you would see at, for example, the NEMHF -- it's just that I don't go to the NEMHF any more, in large part to avoid seeing seven hours of bands that I mostly don't care for and would be pasting 3s and 4s on, with accompanying commentary pretty much exactly in line with the above.  Some fans may take comfort in that assertion; for the rest, oh wow, an old jerk in an armored kutte doesn't like deathcore.  Shock horror.  Send me hate mail, I'll publish it.

Vattnet Viskar [6/7]
I moved up again for this band, if only to catch them as at the time of signing, since it had been a while.  What I got was worth it, an intense and driven set of third-wave black metal that shed a lot of its alleged hipster aspects, following Fell Voices more closely than Wolves In The Throne Room.  (Observant TWBM elitists/completists will notice that this merely ameliorates, rather than straight-up eliminates, the nebulous accusations of hipsterism.)  Though their history is fairly short, and their antecedents deemed by some as "politically unreliable", it's difficult to see on this set how Vattnet have not earned their 'promotion'; they were fully able to carry both the large stage and the overwhelmingly death-metal crowd, with enough poise and violence to be able to take this sound on the road, and avoid the drop for longer than the couple months the band are estimating it at right now.  There are going to still be a few dead-enders who begrudge them the nod, and probably a couple more who'll assert that on material alone, another band from the area (Obsidian Tongue, say) should have been the one to carry the third-wave banner out of the Boston area, but if Vattnet can continue to hit these marks (and kick Liturgy in the goolies at any opportunity), most people will be fine with them getting the exposure.

Vattnet peel the layers back.  (Also: footwear doesn't show up, but uniformly met with the censors' approval.)

Fit For An Autopsy [5/7]
The last of the localish bands up, Fit For An Autopsy dumped out an earthshaking set of competently-tuned deathcore that ultimately came out with a lot more hitting power than originality.  Despite this, it was a decent time, as this music usually is at this high a level of delivery -- and Nate had probably the best-tuned banter of the night, even with Frank Mullen's gems later.  In every opportunity to talk to the crowd, he continually barked up the next three bands: Revo, Fetus, and Suffocation alone, with never a mention, for the whole run of the set, of Six Feet Under.  I regularly ignore Six Feet Under as well, and would end up going home on the night without seeing them, but it was still humorous to get this attitude from someone on the bill, on the stage, where he'd have to deal with the wrath of publicists and tour managers.

Revocation [6/7]
Though there may have been a tour or two that I missed, this was at least the first time I'd seen Revocation on the big stage at the Palladium, and they handled it well -- more accurately, they flat killed it, despite no Anthony (whether a tendonitis flare-up, or other non-band-life issues) and not really enough time.  Most of the set was off Chaos of Forms (entirely appropriate, as it's the latest that they have out), but there was a fair amount of older stuff as well, including opening with "Re-Animaniac", which just goes to show what the hell I know.  They've done better on smaller stages, but this kicked a lot of ass, and when they come back next month, they'll likely be more in command of the larger stage.

Revocation slashing into "Dismantle The Dictator".

It's worth mentioning that while the sound downstairs was really not that bad for most of the bands, it took a definite step up for Revocation and the bands following them, either because they got a real sound check on arriving at the venue in the morning, or because the touring bands brought their own sound guy, who was less of a boots-on-the-head] than the normal Palladium knob-twirlers.  I was watching the bands, not the soundboard, so I can't tell for certain, but the improvement was marginal enough to suggest the former rather than the latter.

Dying Fetus [6/7]
Though I moved off the floor and back up onto the terraces for Dying Fetus, the effect carried all the way back.  This was another and brutal strong set, but a little more weighted towards the band's older material than I've seen from them before, likely synching up with the re-releases of older material that I indulged in at the merch stand.  It was pretty decent runtime-wise, but still felt a little short; maybe due to closing out with "Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog", or maybe they went back to that classic grindblast pisstake due to runtime constraints.  Either way, this set was relentlessly impressive, and to a certain degree could have kept going for another hour and still left the audience wanting more.

Suffocation [7/7]
Suffocation were technically another "name local" along the lines of Vattnet or FFAA, but the set that they delivered was fully headliner-worthy (Note: Suffo-Fetus-Revo-FFAA, not a totally terrible tour package, either artistically or as a commercial proposition).  Despite the lineup changes (no Mike, boo to the wasted energy executing his parts), Suffocation delivered a monster set of ceaseless slams with ceaseless professionalism.  We got a couple tunes off the forthcoming album (due to start recording in August to drop next year, iirc) in with a good mix of newer and older stuff -- with a definite concentration on Effigy..., which the band, at least per Frank, appears to have accepted as their definitive record -- and uniformly first-rate banter from Frank, who kept it focused as well as funny, and got to the punchline of his Miami-bath-salts-zombie joke before any of the Celtics fans in the crowd bounced any empty containers off his skull.  Most Suffocation sets, as the sample space of the last eight years indicates, do not turn out quite this good, but when they do, they are fucking killer.

Suffocation only finished up at 10 PM, but at this point I'd been thrashing out for 9 hours, including that frantic four hours back and forth, back and forth, at the start, and was worn down to a bare nub of permanently-dissatisfied kutte-wearing elitist.  I considered things over, and decided to take a pass on Six Feet Under in favor of not dying on the way home or sleeping through my alarm Monday morning.  Both of those turned out to be close calls -- don't listen to Woods of Ypres if you're concerned about falling asleep behind the wheel -- but ultimately I got back, unpacked the four shirts and eight CDs -- two Sexcrement, one Totality, one Dying Fetus, one The Summoned, and three, from Abacinate and Hammer Fight plus a Scion (spit) sampler that I'd gotten Relapse-grab-bagged while picking up a Revocation shirt -- and plowed through the work week largely unaffected.  Of course, the recuperation time and the time needed to actually write this up put in some delays, but you do what you can.

Every Shirt LXXVII: Suffocation

shirt: Suffocation
size: XL (US)
vintage: 2007
provenance: band

This is a tour shirt, the graphic not tied to any particular album; I picked it up at about the one major show I went to during the brief time I was between jobs at the end of '07, their stop with Skinless and Immolation that turned out to be the last gig that I saw at Mark's Showplace. I can't say that I'm sad to see the venue go; this was a great show to close out, personally, with, and I don't miss the two-hour drive, the traffic jams at the New Hampshire Neckdown, the inflated beer prices, the occasional cuts of headliner sets to make way for P2P openers, and the other assorted drama much at all. Mark's provided a vital showcase function for new bands, but for every Ruin (ME), Lord Bacon, or Severed Survival that I wouldn't've seen otherwise, there was a set from any number of less memorable bands that I could have done just as well without.

To write up Friday's Autumn Above show or not? On the con side, the opener was an AIC cover band and AA fits no canonical definition of metal exactly. On the pro side, Mongrel and Scarecrow Hill are going to be playing this same bar (yes, at the same time) in like a week or so, and if I go write up that show for the lulz (and because it's 2 blocks from my apartment), I kind of have to write up the good bands playing good shows there as well. Whatever, it's not getting done in advance of Bone Awl tomorrow night.

Carcass with Suffocation, Necrophagist, Dying Fetus, 1349, Rotten Sound, Beneath The Massacre, and Veil of Maya [Worcester Palladium, 9/5/2008]

The reunion tour of the summer came around and fulfilled all expectations; I'm still nearly knocked out from exhaustion and such, but even if there hadn't been Summoning Hate et al on Thursday night and Impaled coming on Tuesday, this would be well sufficient for any weekend.

I took a half day from work, and as later comments will show, probably should have just taken the whole day off. Regardless, I had plenty of time to get fueled up and into the Palladium on time. Since I didn't particularly care about Veil of Maya, and because the gig started so early that most people were still at work, I didn't have much difficulty picking up a couple (very expensive) shirts from the merch stand. The weak dollar is probably as much to blame as greed; if you could buy anything in England with twelve quid, maybe Carcass would be a little more sanguine about a $25 price point.

Veil of Maya [4/7]
The most ill-matched band to this bill (well, maybe next to 1349), it's difficult to see even why they're touring with Dying Fetus. They weren't any better or more interesting than their previous appearance at the NEMHCF, and probably the best part of their set was that most of the ninjas got their energy out doing backflips in the empty pit, and didn't go injuring people during the later bands. This was the sole band of the night where I was, seriously, scratching my head wondering how people get into this kind of music; repetitive riffs and unineteresting composition. Maybe it's a moshing thing, but more people were more violent for the next band, and I thought that was why old thrash metal was coming back anyway.

Beneath The Massacre [5/7]
This, on the other hand, was a nice set of straight-ahead mosh music. Beneath The Massacre does not do a whole lot of variety, but fast, dense, tight, deathcore, they do in spades, and they do it very well. I'm not a huge fan of this style without the other adornments of, say, a Dying Fetus, but the execution here was absolutely dead-on. I was up in front of the mixing stand, but it sure looked like those on the floor were enjoying the hell out of the band. Good stuff, even if just for the technical aspect.

Rotten Sound [6/7]
I really can't explain how this band didn't get more of a reaction than they did. The singer's accent was a little dense, but they were still the only 100% grindcore band opening up for Carcass, and people had been thrashing mightily just before they went on. Maybe a different audience; Rotten Sound did a hell of a good performance, and while there was some moshing, this set downstairs at the Middle East -- or, seriously, upstairs here -- would have been a sea of flying bodies most of the way through. Alas, most of the kids who came for Heartwork have no idea who Trap Them are, so the reference and the shirt were probably for naught.

On the other hand, it seemed like everyone who is in a metal or grind band in New England turned out for this -- namedropping said bands individually would take up probably more space than several actual review entries -- and they definitely did pick up on it.

1349 [5/7]
Aborted dropped or didn't show up or something, so 1349 got slightly longer after a slightly longer wait, and from where I was standing made the most of it. I don't know whether they've developed since I last heard them, or if it was just the soundboard fucking up again, but I didn't recall them having so many black-and-roll tunes previously. It made the fit with the rest of the bill a little better, but they're 1349, not Vried, and their more directly chaotic black metal personally came off better.

Dying Fetus [6.5/7]
I really had to go back and check -- did I really never see Dying Fetus before? Well, I missed them at NEDF, and they were touring last fall and I had to go to Texas, I think, rather than seeing them at the Middle East. Before that, I was probably in Germany and before that, in Michigan and/or dead broke. Not so hard to believe after all. I'm not as into DF as the other bands remaining, but this was a great, powerful set, showing off a lot of death-grind punch and a good amount of variety in its application. Good stuff -- now I've just got to remember to go see them when they come around with a headlining slot.

At the conclusion of their set, they told people to stick around for Necrophagist; on one level, this was cool, because there had been a lot of uncertainty about the lineup -- a kind of Champion's League of death metal, with all the early angst about who was going to make it through the qualis -- and it wasn't concretely established that Necrophagist was going to play here, period. On the other hand, it was concerning -- how in the hell does Necrophagist play after Dying Fetus in North America, even supporting Carcass? I mean, I'm much more into Necro than DF, and it sounds weird even to me.

Necrophagist [7/7]
The new drummer's no Marco Minneman, but was definitely up to the standard of their previous material. Naturally, the set as a consequence wasn't as stunning as their headlining appearance at last year's Summer Slaughter, but merely up to their previous standards of ridiculous technicality. This was a top-class set of tech-death, but as good as the band was, even better was the announcement from Muhammed that there's going to be another Necrophagist album, and that they'll be back next year on Summer Slaughter. The tour's less important -- even though it assures that unlike this year's iteration, the package will unilaterally be worth seeing -- than the notice that the preeminent Turco-German musician of his generation isn't ready to trade in his guitar for an AutoCAD workstation just yet. As good as this band is, whenever Muhammed decides that he's going to get on with the rest of his life, it'll be a sad day, but the knowledge that we'll get at least another full-length out of them, plus the as-yet-unnamed Suicmez/Minneman collaboration that's in the works, is a definite positive.

Suffocation [7/7]
I hit the floor at this point, taking advantage of the change in style to get down on the rail. Doing otherwise with a bad knee would be little short of suicidal; as it was, I saw relatively little of Suffocation as opposed to listening to them while keeping a weather eye on the crowd to keep myself and those around me from getting totally wrecked. The music was ripping as usual, including a brand new song from the forthcoming record, which sounded as supremely finished as you'd expect from a Suffocation composition, even though they're still working on the disc in question. Frank also provided a nice sense of history, referencing their past swings with Carcass back in the early '90s, and Suffocation provided an eminently headliner-quality set of slammingly brutal death metal. Killer stuff, but the best was still to come.

Carcass [7/7]
This was what we'd been waiting for since the reunion was announced, and for those who remembered how successful Heartwork was for the band, there's no way they came away disappointed. (Those who somehow forgot shouldn't be chastised too severely; this was, after all, 15 years ago.) This was a longer and slightly deeper set than they did in Germany, but -- perhaps because I had that prior experience, or perhaps because Ken didn't fly over to make a special appearance as he did at Wacken -- in some way not quite as amazing. This was still, of course, Carcass, and ripping through a bunch of killer material as though they'd never been gone, but just great, rather than historically great. The only unfortunate part was, as usual, that they didn't go on longer, but "A Night with Carcass" might have been a harder sell for a band that's been out of commission for 15 years than a conventional tour like this.

Finally, the stage techs rather than the band came out to break the backline down as the autopsy footage rolled, and it was time to head home. It wasn't until after I got onto 128, though, that getting less than three hours' sleep after Summoning Hate the night before (viz "trap show" comments way back up at the top) really started to hit, and I didn't have enough of C.W. McCall's "shot[s] of black C" to make it back reliably without running the car into anything. Luckily, my work is on the way back, so I could take a detour to get an "hour of Zs" in the parking garage and recharge. Well, 30 minutes, but it was enough, and I'm still alive, and if it wasn't absolutely the best show that it could possibly have been, you can't honestly argue with the quality of the actual performances involved.


There's been a fair bit of grousing around some of the circumstantials here, stopping just short of suggesting that Carcass is doing this reunion mainly for the money; high merch prices, most of the set from their mst popular works, et cetera. Those burned up about this should bear the following two points in mind:

1) Every reunion of a successful band after a long layoff is to at least some degree driven by economic factors. Every single one, from Black Sabbath on down.
2) This reunion would not have happened if Holger Hubner had not sat down with Jeff, Bill, and a suitcase containing one million euros, and said "It's yours if you get the band back together and play Wacken and Bloodstock".

The last is a paraphrase, sure, but there have been too many rumors of the million-euro guarantee floating around in the last two years to overlook it entirely. Just from Jeff's commentary in the limited windows that I've seen the band, it's pretty clear that the band is still not terribly happy with the Swansong material and how that record turned out, and that they're not tremendously comfortable with going on as Carcass without Ken Owen in the mix. Instead of grousing about commercialism, people should instead be happy that Carcass is going out and executing with professionalism, passion, and artistic integrity in the middle of what is a fundamentally commercial endeavor. It's possible to do a bad reunion if the band is solely stuck together for the cash, but the Carcass guys still actually like one another, and can still go back to those early days in Midlands clubs while they're on stage, even if it's 20 years on, and they're playing in the US to, largely, people who were in elementary school when Symphonies of Sickness was being written. I'm not crazy about paying 30 bucks for a shirt either, but if this tour doesn't math out as a commercial prospect six months ago, they don't do it, and the band is drinking beers with Ken right now, counting the payoff from the summer's festivals, and there's no Carcass reunion for us in North America. Those who were there got a hell of a lot more Carcass than anyone thought they'd ever get even five years ago, and even if this is all the Carcass we get for another fifteen years, there's a hell of a lot of quality in their performance here to last, Kommerz or no Kommerz.

Next gig is probably Impaled -- who will probably never be accused of commercialism -- and after that Wargasm -- another reunion, but probably with a significantly smaller profit motive -- both at the Middle East. For now, I'm just recovering, and just glad there's no shows I have to feel bad about missing.

Suffocation with Immolation, Skinless, Downfall, Never The Next Day, Slayed Innocence, Devil's Champion, Seize The Day, Severed Survival, and Judecca

(show is from Mark's in Bedford, on 11/17/2007, but the local openers completely filled up the title field)

(also, apologies to the Summoning Hate dudes; I wasn't thinking when I did up the title and used their old name, and now I can't replace it without pushing some other band off the end.)


So I got up shortly after doors, as usual for a Saturday show, and got reacquainted with stages on shipping pallets, insipid pseudobeer, invasive security, the long parade of local bands, and all the other accoutrements of Mark's. I had almost forgotten how bad Coors Light is. This was enough 'nostalgia', though; the bands started up quickly, and the music got underway.

Judecca [4/7]
With their Pantera roots and death metal aspirations, along with the singer's scenester look, Judecca presented what many outside observers would categorize as a neat snapshot of metal in the Myspace age, and probably would include an egregious comparison to Job For A Cowboy. The only similarity between these two bands, though, is in that neither is particularly original or interesting; where JFAC cribs directly from Morbid Angel, Judecca are much more of a Pantera-following bro-core band who occasionally try to play death metal. They weren't in any sense bad, but they didn't do anything in this set that gave any indication that they're going to do anything as a band; the riffs were decent, but composition was lacking and as a result the songs never seemed to go anywhere.

Judecca started things off from the main stage, which led to a double-clutch later; given the lack of doods in-house, I'd have started the first local on the second stage to reduce total latency and give more bands longer sets. I'm surprised, though, that Bernie didn't – or, hopefully, couldn't – just add another local to the second stage.

Severed Survival [5/7]
I was quite pleased to see these guys again; aside from Summoning Hate, I hadn't seen any of the other locals I'd seen mentioned around yet, and it's nice to get a positive sure thing on a pay-to-play bill. This time around, they were a little more deathy and less thrashy, but it's really a matter of degrees, and this was still a kickass set of old-school extreme metal. They closed with some Dying Fetus rather than early Death on this one, and the impression was inescapable that they really ought to try to get slots that are not at Mark's; these guys would kick ass at O'Brien's or at Welfare Records with any number of other bands, and they'd probably have a better time if the crowd was moving around.

The same girl who was screaming for Suffocation (and maybe some of the other nationals, but she wasn't right on the rail next to me for Skinless and Immolation) was also screaming for these guys, so she probably knows the band. Regardless, it's a positive; every band needs someone to scream for them, and it's better to have girls doing so than the normal complement of sweaty hairy dudes.

Seize The Day [5/7]
Now, back to the main stage, for a decent but unfortunately somewhat forgettable metalcore band who at least did pass my most basic test: does this band adequately sound like second-rate In-Flames-circa-1997. They did, and it was a decent time; I tried to find the demos they said they had available later, but unfortunately did not. Like a bunch of other bands from this area, they could be the next new band out of Gothenchusetts, and they were pretty good. Interestingly, they had a third guitar on a stand for their bassist to swap onto, rather than adding a sixth member to play mostly rhythm and occasional leads. The sound balance didn't always bring it all the way through, but it was definitely an interesting wrinkle.

The most fortunate thing about this performance, though, was that the singer's ass managed to stay in his pants for the whole set. The same cannot be said of his boxers.

Devil's Champion [5/7]
If Judecca was a bro-core band attempting to play death metal, Devil's Champion came off as a solid death metal band trying to play bro-core with their standard tunings. More death metal got into their sound in the process, and the result was fairly good; I'd seen their name on a couple Pyad bills and some other shows from the Valley, and they're definitely worth checking out for folks on the North Shore and surrounding areas. I did get their demo, but haven't listened through yet; it'll be interesting to see these guys develop, and which direction they decide to take. If this was the sound of "modern death metal" in the US, there'd be a lot fewer people complaining about it.

If you're a real nitpicker and wanting to know which of the three bands at each of the 4, 5, and 6 points on this gig was better than the others, there's an easy solution: go to more shows. The comments only go so far, and you really need to be there live to get an accurate handle on these situations where I resist the urge to do split ratings, which are inherently kind of dumb.

Summoning Hate [6/7]
Changing their name definitely hasn't changed Boston's best Latin death metal band; despite a few hitches – which later caused David (drums) to insist that their performance sucked – they were easily better than the other locals on the bill, and hung in well with the nationals, meriting the billing that had them WSGed for the touring bands on most of the venue flyers leading up to the gig. Despite those few points where the Avilas were out of phase with each other, this was a good set featuring some really good music; death fans in the Northeast should check these guys out, not least because at least according to the band, you're likely to see even a better set than this one.

This was the part where the stage scheduling double-clutched and left no band playing while they did a set change on the main stage. On one level, it's understandable; Summoning Hate belonged on the same stage as the nationals, both in skill level and general degree of recognition. On another, it's not, given that they could have started with the second stage, played around with the lineup, and had less latency and longer sets. The hopeful part in here is that there was another band originally scheduled, who had to drop due to not meeting their ticket commitments, and Bernie wasn't able to convince any of the other brutalish metal bands in the area to submit to the required reaming. Henry was looking around before the gig to see if there would be enough Mortis Dev supporters going to make taking a slot viable, which apparently didn't pan out; it's always good to see bands get shows, but it's better for them to get paid for doing those gigs (which MD has no problem doing).

Skinless [6/7]
This is what we were all waiting for, the irresistible force (Skinless) versus the immovable object (New Hampshire's anti-mosh laws and TNT's rigorous implementation thereof). This round was a draw, but it was a draw done to the strains of some killer slammish death metal, drawn heavily from Skinless' early catalog, which is being reissued on CD by a combination record label and wrestling promotion. Hooray for the internet driving disruptive business models! This set's crowd-participation activities included the Wave, jumping jacks, and the Zombie Wall of Death, as well as one guy unfortunately getting thrown out for, you guessed it, moshing. The band was quite upset about this last, but this didn't show up for another couple sets.

With the nationals starting up, the venue started to fill up, with a lot more people that I recognized coming in. I gave Brandon (Rohirrim) the Graveland patch I'd woven into an order of some other stuff a while back, and noticed, courtesy of the Summoning Hate posse coming up to see their guys, something that does not happen often: Megan from Hekseri standing next to a guy at an 18+ show that she was legitimately taller than. ;) This was in addition to a bunch of other people I recognized, but unfortunately for the Skinless drummer, not any of the Sexcrement guys (because he was wearing one of their shirts). They, like a lot of the scene in the area, were occupied with not supporting this club due to the pay-to-play and anti-mosh policies.

Slayed Innocence [4/7]
I went back to take a look at these guys, and found them to be mediocre bro-core. I decided I had different priorities and finished getting my merch, then went back to camp the rail for Immolation and Suffocation. They didn't do much by hearsay to convince me that I'd made a mistake, but they weren't actively bad either.

Immolation [6/7]
Immolation, by contrast, put up a killer set, much more tilted to their new stuff than when I saw them at Metalfest. Of course, they were touring behind a new record this time, and the Shadows In The Light material is tremendous, but if you hadn't seen Immolation prior to this, you did miss a bunch of their classics. Of course, the music and delivery thereof was so good that any first timers probably didn't notice or care; the dual leads and prominence of melody in Immolation's music made them a strong contrast to the denser brutality of the other nationals, and should have attracted the interest of people who came out mostly to see the less brutal local bands.

Never The Next Day [4/7]
Like, for, example, these guys, who presented very little evidence that they should be anywhere near a Suffocation bill, let alone playing it. What this group offered is what should be understood as "scenegrind", a new and mostly crummy variant that people need to stop calling grindcore just because scenesters think it is. The mixture of metalcore vocals and a few slammy riffs repeated incessantly did not do much to help the band's cause with the death metal troopies there to see some of the genre's leaders in technical brutality, and, truthfully speaking, the music wasn't really good in any kind of independent sense – and you'd need to be really good to overcome having your singer in a white dress shirt and a gelled-up nohawk with this crew.

Suffocation [7/7]
Then, of course, there's Suffocation, who could debatably come out wearing spandex and Devo hats and still slay. Of course, they didn't, keeping their keep-it-brutal maxim as always, but they did slay, delivering a top-class set of death metal, including a bunch of stuff that they hadn't done in a long while. The sound wasn't quite as good as last year in Worcester, but the performance was maybe a little more consistent. Either way, it was damn killer, and provided an excellent cap to the evening and a perfect soundtrack to victory in the Battle of Bedford.

During Suffocation, two guys got thrown out, but they didn't go down without a fight, and managed to take out two of the security guys in the process, including the huge guy who stumps around for intimidation effect. After this, the secus were a lot more cautious about stepping in down front; core death metal guys fight back a lot harder than most of the opposition they probably get in ejecting scene kids.

The finishing blow, however, was delivered by the guys from Skinless, who blitzed in across the stage and jumped out into the crowd, who managed to keep them from just going straight into the floor. I was concerned that they might get tossed and cause a huge blowup, but Jason (vocals) resolved that as soon as he got out: "They can't throw us out, Frank!" At that point, the balance of power shifted; if the nationals are down front brewing things up, the security can't charge in and brutalize anyone without running the risk of injuring them and causing major trouble with the promoters. From then till the end, there was a nice little pit running down front, a first, at least for a while, at this venue.

So, we won the Battle of Bedford, at least in this particular confrontation, and hopefully, it'll force a shift in how TNT and Mark's approach the moshing issue. The state laws aren't going to change, but the enforcement has to; you cannot really have a metal show in a strict, ejection-only, no-mosh environment. People will get violent and get carried away at times, and if you want a no-mosh environment, just give them a bear hug and tell them to watch where they're throwing their limbs, try not to hit anyone smaller than themselves. There's no need to eject people violently for moshing, rather than actually fighting, even under a state ban: the caution signs at the Palladium work just fine to shield them from liability, and similar signs, subject to state constraints, would probably do it here at Mark's.

The problem here has always been artificial: fascist security, bad location, and ill-advised booking regimes. The second isn't that bad, and the other two can be easily overcome. If more bands are refusing to buy into p2p tactics and the security is starting to get a clue about how to handle metalheads, this could be a decent place to see a show. Could be – for once there was a positive trend at the end of a Mark's show, but there's no sure sign that it's going to continue.

Fear Factory with Suffocation, Hypocrisy, and Decapitated [Worcester Palladium, 11/17/2006]

If you live with a reasonable drive of central New England and missed this show, your loss; front to back, this was one of the best gigs I can remember.


It was a good thing that I was uncertain when doors were (thanks, random RTTP poster with incorrect information!), as I ended up leaving for this show a few minutes after 5, and needed every minute of it to get down by doors, allowing me to get down right on the railing (not exactly front and center, but I had to get a beer to wash the stale hard taste of car-filtered air out of my mouth -- this was some hard driving from 128 onto the Pike). I wasn't hugely up for Decapitated, but it'd be cool to see them up close, and I would have no chance of getting a decent spot for Hypocrisy (well, without throwing elbows around like a dick) if I didn't. Fortunately, they didn't disappoint, and set the tone strongly for the underground portion of the bill to come.

Decapitated [6/7]:
As with practically every opening band at the Palladium, their sound was a little off, but they made the best of it and also turned the crowd around. The energy was a little low at first because it was only the real diehards who were down front, but it built steadily through the set thanks to an extremely solid performance. Some of this is probably due to the music; Decapitated's style is built around fairly avant-garde guitar leads, without a rhythm guitar to help the bass set up the riff structure, and this can be tough to get into live until you get a feel for how they're playing it tonight, and they didn't have quite the PA support for their ridiculous technicality that Suffocation did, which confused the music a little until the soundboard got them somewhat dialed in. The pit was fairly calm, but those of us who were up front were into it, and overall this was a kickass performance that should have been better. "Should have been better" solely because it should have been longer; they got barely half an hour, which is one of the leading arguments for the contention that I'm going to make at the end of this review.

Hypocrisy [7/7]:
This is what I came for, and Peter et al delivered more or less exactly as anticipated. Their sound was better than for Decapitated, but this may have been more of an artifact of style; Hypocrisy is strongly groove-oriented rather than focusing exclusively on technical fireworks, and this demands somewhat less out of the PA setup. Of course, I was in the fourth or fifth row (from the stagefront, I was right on the rail but spread out wide to the side stage right) and thus getting most of the sound straight out of the backline rather than from the PA, which was going mostly over my head, but still. The set was pretty much greatest-hits material (as listed below, no "Carved Up" or "Buried" and nothing off Fourth Dimension), but when you have only 45 minutes to distill a 15-year career into, you'd fucking better play greatest-hits, or your fans are going to throw eggs at the headliner's tour bus for screwing them out of their favorites, and they'll blame you. Still, of course, it was incredible; I mean, come on, it's fucking HYPOCRISY. I'm still hoping to see them at Wacken one of these years (probably this year or next given their history with the fest), but this was still a tremendous, tremendous experience.

Hypocrisy's setlist:
Fractured Millennium (surprised they didn't open with War Path, it's a badass opener as well as from the current record)
Adjusting The Sun (pit went bananas from the first riff)
Eraser
Osculum Obscenum (only pre-Abducted song)
War Path
Roswell-47 (lots of people singing on this one)
The Final Chapter (no idea why they didn't swap this and Knife, it's just about the best death metal set closer ever written)
Let The Knife Do The Talking (new song, so the crowd didn't wholly catch on to the "kill...kill...kill..." bit right away)

Suffocation [7/7]:
There were slightly fewer people down front for them as opposed to Hypocrisy, but this just meant more room for the pit. People were going balls-out; on a couple songs there were at least two independent pits going on, including at least one basically in the front row. I spent about a quarter of the set facing basically into the crowd, acting as a shock absorber to keep people from being thrown into the railing. Good times. Also, Suffo's sound was FUCKING UNBELIEVABLE, incredibly thick and sharp, probably the best and cleanest that I've heard live, and at least the best that I can remember. The band was really on their game, and Frank, pressed for time (again, same situation as Hypocrisy, they got about 45 minutes), at last kept his jabbering between songs down to a reasonable level. The only pick points on this one were that at the start, the bass was a little too loud and Terrance Hobbs' guitar wasn't really cutting through on his solos on my side (he was stage left most of the show), but they fixed this and gave Mike a little more power on his toms, and all was good. Actually, all was FUCKING INCREDIBLE, but that's what happens when you give a great band on a peak night great sound and an enthusiastic crowd.

During some of the more psycho parts, I and a few other people were helping prevent someone's kid brother -- looked like 11 or 12 -- from getting totally killed by the encroaching pit. There were a couple other kids in the floor crowd as well, which was cool, though unusual, as it really calls into question the sanity of the people who brought them in there. We don't need security standing on the stairs, next to a sign that says "You must be THIS tall to go on the floor", but for the sake of common sense, if you're gonna bring a kid onto the floor at a brutal show, GET THEM ON THE DAMN RAIL! From the first row, they can see the band without us six-foot, 250-pound behemoths in the way, and they additionally are in significantly less danger of getting seriously injured by someone breaking through the pit wall, or trampled accidentally by someone trying to keep the wall where it's supposed to be. By all means, bring your sprogs and younger siblings to the show, but don't put them in the middle of the floor until they've gotten their main growth spurt.

Funniest moment from Suffocation: Frank calls out shout-outs to the other bands on the bill. "All the way from Poland -- DECAPITATED!!!" The front of the house yells a lot. "Our good friends from Sweden -- HYPOCRISY!!!" The front of the house yells more and throws the horns a lot. "We are from Lon Giland Noo Yawk, and we are SUFFOCATION!!!" The front of the house yells a lot and throws the horns some more. "And coming up, FEAR FACTORY!!!" A giant roar goes up from the BACK of the house, and some people up front clap some.

Fear Factory [5.5/7]:
This ought to give the lie to any developing impression that national headliners automatically get great scores just for showing up. A seven is a seven is a seven, whether by a local band at a local show or an international legend headlining Wacken, and this set, despite being by a recognized band headlining a major club, would still have pulled a 5.5 whether it was delivered at O'Brien's or on the Party Stage. If I had to pick three words to describe this set, they would be "competent", "loud", and "boring"; some of this is probably lingering aftereffects of the underground portion of the bill, but seriously, Decapitated played a couple songs that were themselves more technically challenging than Fear Factory's entire set. Hell, HYPOCRISY played some songs that were more technical than Fear Factory's entire set, and they're hardly known for being bruisingly technical as a death metal band. Of course, music need not be technical to be good, but Fear Factory here was trying to play nontechnical music while still coming off as technical and brutal by virtue of pure volume. Unfortunately, they were too loud for the hall and crushed their actual sound, while still not managing to cover up the fact that Christian would go for minutes at a time without changing his fingering, just changing where on the neck his hand was. If I could actually be bothered to learn to play Fear Factory songs, even I could do that; emulating the other instrumentalists on this bill would require a significant talent transplant and approximately five thousand years of practice.

The pit was nice and turbulent for Fear Factory, but I wasn't in it, and there was precious little especially appealing about their set. It was well-executed, and the band was on their game, but the standard of execution here is necessarily lower because the songs are a lot easier to play. It was still a good performance, but it followed a long night of balls-out incredible performances by the nominal openers, and necessarily felt like somewhat of a letdown. This leads into the contention in the next paragraph, but first it must be mentioned that before going on, they played Iron Maiden's "The Number Of The Beast" in its entirety. Nu-metal is officially dead and buried; I thought they were going to just steal the Vincent Price intro, but no, they stole Iron Maiden's thunder and their complete whole classic to get the crowd up for them. I was singing along and lolling inside, much the same as the other undergrounders around me who had pulled up onto the carpeted area to give the FF fans the floor.

The core contention here is that Fear Factory maybe shouldn't have played this at all. Granted, I'm not sure that either Suffocation or Hypocrisy could have filled the Palladium on their own, and there isn't really a club between that and the Middle East in size for them to play in Massachusetts, but as far as Hypocrisy's catalog goes, there's a lot of stuff that just plain got left out, and the way Suffocation was just crushing along, they could have gone on for two hours and no one would have really cared. This was a kickass show, but it would have been flat incredible with one or two local openers, Decapitated getting 45 minutes, and Hypocrisy and Suffo coheadlining at about an hour each, flip a coin while the local guys are going on to decide who's closing the show. The lesson of course out of this is to PUMP UP THE FUCKING UNDERGROUND, so that a tour like this is economically viable. Continue supporting brutal music, and make sure the bands know that we want them to stay heavy, stay underground.

Even so, it's fairly admirable of Fear Factory to put together a package like this; it shows both their confidence in their own ability to control the attentions of their fans, to provide a good experience so that their people will still see them as a highlight even when they get technically shelled by the support, and their continuing commitment to the brutal underground, because no matter how much they try to call themselves "heavy alternative", it's still metal fans buying their albums. As Seth Putnam's said in the past, "face it, you're a metal band". Fear Factory are facing up to this, and also showing some integrity by paying back dues to the brutal bands who were around with them when they got their start. Good intentions didn't necessarily make their set any better, but they deserve credit for it all the same.


Working hard on the second book, which is going to be less metal but more brutal; next show is probably Blind Guardian due to family holiday commitments.