Summer Slaughter 2014 - Dying Fetus with The Faceless, Thy Art Is Murder, Goatwhore, Origin, Decrepit Birth, Within the Ruins, Fallujah, Boreworm and Reborn Divided [Worcester Palladium, 8/9/2014]

Since for once I wasn't on call for a major tour, I bit down on the high door price and the large number of bands I wasn't particularly interested in and headed out for this one; it's no Party.San, and missing Benediction was probably the biggest price I paid for the China thing, but there were still a lot of quality bands on this bill, and it's not like there was much else going on.  Despite the usual midday tie-up on the pike, I got over about half an hour after doors, got in and through, and did some merch and got a beer while waiting for the bands to start.

Reborn Divided [3.5/7]
I could have waited a little longer.  These guys opened up the downstairs with a preschool-level set of My First Deathcore, about five songs with two compositional ideas at one (pointlessly slow) tempo.  This is not the worst band I've seen in this room, and the score improved a little when the drummer showed in the last song that yes, he was capable of playing a blastbeat, but it was pretty fucking bad -- like "a bad version of ten-year-old Acacia Strain B-sides" bad.  I tried for most of their set to find something else redeeming, or that would indicate that there was some potential for improvement, but...just...nothing.  No key changes.  No tempo changes outside of a couple ten-second blast sections.  No special technical competence from the instrumentalists, and no particularly appealing breakdowns: you don't need to do either or both, especially in deathcore, but if you can't solo, you better have some good breakdowns, and vice versa.  Nothing.  Whether due to excessive self-satisfaction or simple lack of ability, this band is probably at their ceiling and can be safely disregarded until such time as they can find professionals to say nice things about them.

Feeling fairly confirmed about what kind of things can be expected to happen when I go to larger tours, I went back, grabbed another beer, and got down in time for the next band up.  I could probably have tried harder to see the upstairs as well, but there wasn't, like, a fairly obvious running order posted anywhere -- one sheet with times on it taped in a forest of posters next to each of the staircases from the lobby to the downstairs, that's it -- and I wasn't really looking out for any of the local openers.  The good ones, I'll see at some point on a local show; the less good ones, I won't waste time and the chance of missing Decrepit Birth on.

Boreworm [5/7]
The other Battle-for-Summer-Slaughter winner on the bill (Reborn Divided placed between first and third at the first round of regionals in Trenton back in February, which is a hell of a thing to have to put in your press kit, and an additional reminder that the "wisdom of crowds" depends pretty heavily on the composition of those crowds), Boreworm won the final to go from southeast Michigan to the whole national tour, and to their credit held their end up with a pretty good set of brutal death metal flavored with post-metal bits.  Though the next time they come around, they're more likely to be at Ralph's, they commanded the large stage well and gave the audience a good time; you can ask more from openers, but not realistically expect much more.

Fallujah [6/7]
I had low to no expectations of this band, based on mostly national press and the fact that most of the bands who play Summer Slaughter, I tend not to like too much.  They completely blew those expectations away with a solid, crushing set of quality brutal death metal leavened with space-influenced tech breaks; more Obscura than Decrepit Birth, but Decrepit Birth was kind of already playing this show also, and Obscura wasn't -- and in any case, more quality death metal never goes amiss.  If you're also an old crank who tends to give new bands a miss for no real reason, this tour -- loaded with old known-good bands -- is an excellent opportunity to remind yourself that newer music does not necessarily suck, and that some of this stuff is pretty damn good.

Afterwards, I tried to buy their new record off the merch stand, but rather than pay for vinyl to get snapped in half during the coming Decrepit Birth/Origin rail stand, I ended up with the old one, which I didn't have yet either.  Retail is still a thing occasionally, right?  I can just go to a store and get physical music, right?  Maybe not; only about three bands had records on their merch tables, a clear sign that digital delivery is dominating physical music generally and CD format in particular straight out of existence.  Whether bought on Itunes or boosted on bittorrent, the assumption is that the audience here is pulling the music out of the ether, and lugging physical copes around is wasted van space that can't be used for shirts, which people are going to buy.

Within the FlamesRuins [5/7]
As an old North Shore head, it is good to see that Gothenchusetts is still a thing.  It is less good to see that it is this silly of a thing, loaded with decade-old tropes and rounded out with electro shadings that make it seem like this band should be opening the Crossfaith tour in a couple months, but I'm not really the audience for this band.  People who are still in the age bracket that I was in when Life In Vain was the greatest thing to ever happen to a VFW will find these guys less silly, less cheesy, and a whole lot more fun to get in the pit for, which is kind of the point of this music.  This is not old-dude-in-armored-jacket music, but it is an enjoyable way to pass the time between heavier bands.

A last beer, and I hit the front; Decrepit Birth into Origin was kind of mostly why I came out for this, and if I can't do two sets' worth of rail stand, I should really stop going to shows altogether.

Decrepit Birth setting up.

Decrepit Birth [6.5/7]
You can pick points with this set.  The only one that matters is that it was on a super-package tour, and thus had to stop at some point.  When Decrepit Birth is on like this, there is not ever really enough Decrepit Birth, only varying degrees of "not enough"; this was "not enough", true, but it was a good, long deep toke of "not enough", technical, melodic, floor-churning, brutal, and mind-expanding in the way that the best death metal is.  With the short set time as a constraint, the band kept the pedal down all the way through, and the results were pretty fucking impressive, holding the entire hall rapt straight on to the end.  Excellent.

Bill roaring away; the clouds of smoky haze are exactly what you think they are.  There were technically some other pictures, but they came out even less than these did.

Origin [7/7]
As they've been in the past, Origin set off an explosion of brutal, hyperblasting death metal that made no compromises and barely stopped over the full runtime.  With the larger stage and larger floor, there was also enough room for Jason to bust out a couple of the old Skinless Stupid Mosh Tricks; they needed more time for actual music, so there was no Tsunami or Zombie Wall, but Jason remains the one guy who can plausibly get people to do a silent Wall of Death, and Origin one of the few bands where this is a better idea than trying to go on the music.  As expected, the floor was a sea of violence for most of the set, contested only by the even less inhibited violence coming out of the PA.  Surgical precision, devastating results: death metal does not really get much better.

At this point I was done for a while -- until Dying Fetus and the decision whether or not to stick for Morbid Angel -- so I got some food and moved back a ways to see the next couple bands.

Goatwhore [5/7]
Exactly as expected, Goatwhore continues to be as they have been since they succeeded Krisiun as the default opening band on every show: attempting, with intermediate success, to follow up "...Black Sun Cult".  They played this song second, but might as well have played it in every other slot as well, since it is quite literally all they have, a conclusion that grows more and more obvious with every passing year.  It's a good song.  Copying it on every other song has gotten them to be an acceptable 1349 ersatz.  But there's still nothing in this set to indicate this band is ever going to do anything different, or ever get any better than "good enough".

I got another beer, and since the lower hall was getting fuller, changed sides before the next band.

Thy Art Is Murder [5.5/7]
For a poing-by-numbers deathcore band, these guys were all right, and kept a pretty good sense of humor through the set.  Their music's well-executed, but not really memorable, the point of it being mostly to have something going on audially so dudes can jump up and down in time.  There are better bands from Australia, but not many that are both better and so perfectly pitched to this tour's expected audience.

One last beer -- it was becoming clearer that I probably wasn't going to stick around for Morbid Angel, and I needed to dry out a little -- and it was back down, getting a decent place that I could also keep for Dying Fetus.

The Faceless [5.5/7]
This was a pretty good outing from a band that I habitually ignore; good, but not disruptively so to the degree that I'd actually develop an interest.  Their take on death metal is well-worked and usually interesting, but a lot of their more melodic or prog parts are a lot better in conception than in execution -- especially the ones that call for clean vocals from the guitarist, who either is really not capable of doing them at all, or needs to invest in a working in-ear monitor ASAP, rather than soldier on with one that's obviously broken.  They're still a good time overall, though, and still continuing to develop and do different things while keeping a good baseline of brutality, so I'm going to continue to make sure to see them when they're inevitably on another festival/tour that I'm going to see other bands at.

Dying Fetus [6.5/7]
This is probably not the best set I've seen from Dying Fetus; that honor will probably end up going to the gig a couple years back with Carcass, but it was pretty damn close.  Ceaselessly explosive and exactly on point for a good, full, set that could easily have gone on like half an hour longer without any complaints, they pounded the crowd into small pieces and kept on hitting.  For those who, like me, were going to end up bailing rather than sticking around to see how much Illuderp material Morbid Angel was going to try to get away with, this was an excellent headlining set from an excellent band.  For those who were going to stick around and hope that the headliners were going to pretend that the twenty years since Domination didn't actually happen, this was a hell of a mark for them to come up to.

After Dying Fetus, as alluded to, I headed up and out, accompanied by more people than I was really expecting.  I don't think it's the wheels coming off for Morbid Angel, not really, but this was a pretty good tour from about 1600 to 2100, dudes were exhausted, the kids who came for the metalcore had a curfew, the diehards all saw Morbid in Boston back in November under better circumstances, and their last album is a steaming turd.  I've seen enough Morbid Angel festival sets, and don't really need more, until such time as they get their shit together and put out something new and non-horrible.  Missing them in November sucked, but they weren't going to play that set on this date anyway.

Owing to the relatively early start (seriously, it was like 10, on a Saturday night in the summer -- the hell, Palladium), I got back in good order, did not get too soused watching the Community Shield on Sunday, and turned this thing around in decent time.  Next up should be King Parrot and some death metal bands in Worcester; the surprise that they're back from Australia is overshadowed by the relief that they're appearing with appropriate touring partners, rather than whatever nominally-metal bands their tour agency could scrounge up.


It was because of this show that I didn't go out to RPM Fest; there were several bands on that bill that I was interested to see, and the festival experience is always a good thing to support.  From the latest iterations in the thread of ceaseless screaming drama, it looks like the fest went ok: neither such a failure that the trolls could claim victory, nor such a success that they would be shut up and left to slink off with their tails between their legs.  Regardless, the success or failure of a festival isn't decided on the internet the week after, but by the organizers in the month or so to come, when they decide if they do a second.  At a minimum, they fulfilled the requirements I mentioned a couple years back, and depending on which pictures from which angle and what time you trust, may have gotten up to the 200 headcount point that previous examples in Germany have established as a baseline for something that's not going to immediately collapse in on itself.  However, they did a bunch of stuff wrong that made it difficult to support going in, and eventually made me decide against going out.

The first was bad scheduling around the fest.  When you announce a festival two months in advance, you should maybe make sure that is not booked against the one date of the big summer tour in the area.  Putting Saturday night against Summer Slaughter was just stupid, and unnecessarily locked out, um, everyone in New England who was interested in seeing Dying Fetus or Morbid Angel.  This is kind of a large slice of the metalheads who you'd want to show up for a DIY festival on its first run out, and this fest could have gotten them back easily by booking just two weeks later, which would conflict with neither Summer Slaughter nor Pray For Death.

The second was the scheduling internal to the fest.  If you look at any other multi-day camp-in festival, anywhere else in the world, you will never see bands going this late into a Sunday, the reason being that it is a lot easier to take off, or take off a couple hours earlier, on Friday than it is to take off Monday.  Sunday morning is for pack-up, Sunday afternoon for travel back to wherever the hell you came from.  It'd've been a lot more friendly for people outside the immediate catchment area -- western Massachusetts is not well served by highways, and most of the population centers are at a pretty fair distance -- to open the gates at 5 PM Friday, with bands starting at 7 or so, and either push later on Friday and Saturday or just cut some of the fat from the schedule.

The third is the unnecessarily bloated schedule.  There ended up being 32 bands on this thing, and many of them were (by investigation in advance) pretty bad.  You do not need the best bands in the world on your fest -- seriously, check the Party.San bills for the first five years, and see if you can avoid the conclusion "this is all late-90s unlistenable garbage" -- but you do need to avoid the impression, prominent here, that the music is going to be a dump truck's worth of suck.  This bill could easily have been trimmed back to 15 or 20 bands without trimming the audience, giving more of them better sets and eliminating the need to play all Sunday to fit them all in.

Provided that they do a second, and that it's not booked against stuff that will take precedence -- even with China, it was a close-run thing to not spend this past weekend in Schlotheim -- it's likely that I'll be out for it, despite the road miles involved, to take in the experience for myself.  But seriously, smarter scheduling and a more selective filter on who plays will make that decision a lot easier for others who might be on the fence about the camp-in idea.

Necrophagist with Decapitated, Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, The Faceless, As Blood Runs Black, Ion Dissonance, Beneath The Massacre

(show, at the Palladium in Worcester on 7/6/2007, also included In Dire Need and Zircon as local support, but I ran out of headline room.)


I took the day off from work for this gig, and it was certainly worth it -- not only for recuperating my feet, but because there was a long share of good music that I would have missed if I'd just left for Worcester at 6. As it was, I got moving a little later than I'd planned to -- and without taking my boots over to the cobbler, which I now have to do next week or risk not getting them back for Wacken. I was able to get parking no problem, but the late start and thick traffic on 128 due to a blue-sky cloudburst led to one of the few down points of the night, missing nearly all of Zircon's set.

Zircon [N/A]
As I came in, they were on their last song, which sucked for me. From what I saw, they were pretty thoroughly on, which was good, despite the new guitarist, who can't have been in the band for more than a month or so. The only unfortunate part about their set was the sound, which negatively affected about the whole first half of the bill; the guitars, especially the leads, sounded a little buried, which is totally egregious; there is no reason, when setting up a board for a metal show, to not have the guitars forward by default. I mean, come the fuck on. I can understand the sound guys not putting effort into bringing a local band's solos out, but the first three nationals were also poorly handled, and this particular mismix makes the sound come off as intentionally bad; a new low for the sound in this place.

I talked with the guys later while scooping some stuff, and I stand by my assessment that if Zircon can keep it together, they have an even shot at headlining this kind of bill in a few years. Specifically, four to five years and at least two very good full-lengths, but the band definitely has it in them, and with the right label push it's really a question of when, not if.

In Dire Need [4/7]
I'm not, personally, a huge fan of this style, but this band did a decent job of it; the hardcore influences were honestly and directly done, but I wasn't on the floor for them as I was for Zircon, and the sound was an absolute nightmare. If I could hear what the hell they were doing, I might have enjoyed this more; I got a sampler from them after the show, and that's going to be a much better representation of who and where they are as musicians than this set was.

Beneath The Massacre [4/7]
This band was down for a 4.5 score before I chopped off all the tailing half-scores (still hate doing them), also in large part because their sound was fucked up. They had a few really interesting parts to their sound, but others that didn't come off as so inspired, and the mismanagement at the soundboard really didn't help anything. I'm somewhat interested in seeing this band again, but if the next time they're around is an early slot on a festival or superpackage at the Palladium, I'm really skeptical of the total effect being any better.

Ion Dissonance [5/7]
Maybe it was the sound, maybe it was the prevalence of new material (Minus The Herd is okay, but pretty much just okay), but this set didn't have the same immediate and explosive effect that they put up the last time I saw them (Metalfest '06). It was still pretty well done, with the hardcore standing out more than the brutal thrash parts (almost certainly because I've got a better ear for this now rather than any change on the band's part), but while the sound mix wasn't hurting them much -- the thick and dense sound being basically all that the sound system could convey until the headliners came on -- it wasn't exactly helping them either. This was a decent set, but not, really, what I came for.

In around here, I did my merch run, picking up some Cattle Decapitation and Necrophagist gear. I wanted to support Decapitated as well, but they didn't have any merch out, for reasons that would become clear later. I didn't get the Necrophagist shirt I wanted, but the second-choice design is also cool, and Cattle Decapitation's "GORE NOT CORE" design is something that every anti-trend metaller should appreciate.

As Blood Runs Black [4/7]
Speaking of trends, there was little I could do but shake my head during this band's set. There were a lot of people into them, but all I could think was "we are in New England. We know what Shadows Fall sounds like -- and this band is but a pale fallen shadow thereof." Where Shadows Fall is a good band making good music and diminishing the case for metalcore-as-a-dirty-word, As Blood Runs Black seemed mostly interested in playing through Of One Blood again and hoping people wouldn't notice that the state of the art had advanced. The sound was okay and the playing competent, but the band was doing nothing original, and it was a relief when they closed up. I'm not sure that I recall hearing the singer tell the crowd to "bring the ruckus", but if such occurred, it would indeed be about the dumbest thing I have seen on a metal stage.

Well, not really. I've seen Halo of Thorns use Hood strawberry syrup as a blood substitute. That still takes the cake.

The Faceless [5/7]
I hadn't heard this band before, but had heard a little about them and was skeptical, as you kind of have to be about any new band that calls themselves death metal and gets press attention. Fortunately, though, they had some decent sound and a decent sound to deliver through it, an even and smooth mix of melodic and brutal death metal styles. While it wasn't terribly distinctive, it was well-done and a good time; a decent set, and worth remembering even though the top of the bill was coming up, and with it, absolute devastation.

Cattle Decapitation [6/7]
This was a definite top-class set, and if it had been the last of the night, it would have been a fitting capstone to a very good show. While the grind elements were still dominant, there was also a lot of black metal in their sound as well that I didn't notice in the limited experience I've had with them on record; it made for an interesting contrast and a cool overall sound. They've rubbed some people the wrong way personally in the past, but as this set bears out, there's been little complaint about their actual music, which continues to kick ass.

Cephalic Carnage [6/7]
At this point I went down on the floor, because it opened up significantly after Cattle Decapitation, and I needed to get close up for the last two bands. Down closer, the sound was slightly better, but the major advantage to this set was CC's rounded, diverse sound, probably the most wide-ranging of the night. Despite the complexities of their music, they still kept the pit moving as well; towards the end of their set, a kid came out of the pit right in front of me and proceeded to hurl on the ground at the side of the rail, whether from getting spun around of from getting hit in the stomach, it wasn't clear. This was basically the only negative on the night that wasn't directly my fault, and fortunately the kid in question didn't look too much the worse for wear after he'd gotten his guts out onto the floor. Even with this mishap, this was still a killer set.

Decapitated [7/7]
HOLY FUCK. The band basically got right off the bus/van from Quebec due to allegedly forgetting all their money at the hotel in Montreal (there may be a case here that the noncommercial DIY ethos needs to be flavored with a little practicality) and going back from half-way in order to retrieve it, then went on stage, but proceeded to wipe the floor with everyone who had played to this point, and gave Necrophagist a serious run for their money. Their set back in November was good, but not well-mixed, and this one saw one of those rare cases where the stars align and the Palladium soundboard produces a diamond, much like Suffocation back at that gig. The sound was tremendous, world-crushing, and as close to perfect as this building is likely to come, and the set as a result was a pure triumph of Polish death metal. If the headliners had been anyone else, this would have stolen the show fucking blind. Simply incredible; you may commence kicking yourself if you like brutal death and missed this. The floor was similarly insane in their response to the band; it was during Decapitated's set that the dude in this pic got his tooth knocked loose, which he was showing off to the doods on the rail next to me after surfing over the front.

Between Decapitated and Necrophagist, I talked with the Rev, who was similarly overpowered by Decapitated's set -- but also concerned about how the hell he was going to get one of his better cameras over to his girlfriend to shoot Live Earth with; living together makes some equipment issues a little easier for two of New England's most prolific live-music photographers, but does occasionally exacerbate logistical problems caused by how throughly they do cover the region.

Necrophagist [7/7]
The Marco Minnemann Show [7/7]
In addition to being a kickass death metal set, this was also a thorough masterclass in extreme metal technique, arrangement, and songwriting. I saw it from about the 6th row, which is the place to see Necrophagist from, as further back you won't be able to see the hand action, and may not realize exactly what Muhammed, Sami, and Stefan are doing and how exactly it's so mind-blowing. Everyone who knows this band also knows that Muhammed is probably the most accomplished and significant Turco-German musician of his generation (if not of Turkish history in Germany), and most people are probably aware that they've recently enlisted Marco Minneman, who definitely ranks among the greatest living German drummers, but Muhammed's writing and arrangements would go for naught if Sami (guitar) and Stefan (bass) weren't stellar musicians in their own right and able to keep up, allowing the intricacies of the parts to stand forth and impress the pure hell out of the audience. There was some pit motion, but most of Necrophagist's set saw the larger part of the audience absolutely spellbound, watching and listening as the band ripped through cut after cut of stuff that can't be assessed but as light-years ahead of what's going on in the main line of death metal today, and at a level of composition that's rarely touched even by the best of the more technical bands. There was one section in which they moved seamlessly and flawlessly through four riffs in three different tempos and two different keys that was just absolutely stunning; it's difficult to pick out casually, but it's the little things like this that make the band relentlessly awesome.

Marco gets his own rating because he also got (kind of) his own set, in which he generated as much awesome as 3's percussion show with half the drummers. In this tour-de-force, he moved from jazz to funk to hip-hop to tribal to Japanese-traditional to death metal through a long share of technical showing-off with no interruptions or disjunctions, even despite two stick drops. It was about the most incredible performance I've ever seen out of a drummer, and the range of sounds that he could get out of his (admittedly non-traditional) kit was truly awe-inspiring. His abilities are fully tested by backing up up such a technically challenging band, but this solo showed not only his non-metal background and diverse influences, but how he weaves those back into a death metal context; how he contributes to the next Necrophagist record will be really interesting to see, and will likely make it a further and stronger step up from Epitaph.

Sadly, the building curfew kicked in and prevented an encore, though the whole building was screaming for it. It was barely past 11, but the lights went up and the roadies starting tearing down the kit. Oh well; Arsis may have been missed (they had to scratch most of the tour due to van issues), and a double-headliner of Arsis and Necrophagist would be a stupendous clash of tech-death titans, but the bands that remained delivered a kickass show to be sure, and produced enough slaughter last a long slice of the summer -- hopefully the next max-package (Sounds of the Underground) at this venue won't break down the coolness from here too much.