Superchrist with Nightbitch, Panzerbastard, and Rampant Decay [Ralph's, Worcester, 4/24/2012]

For the second week in a row, Metal Thursday (expansion pack) come on a Tuesday to fit the schedule of a touring band, and I duly went out, getting in in one piece after successfully not hitting either the freshly shredded truck tires around the 146 interchange, or the guy who slipped off the lamppost and fell into the street by the Worcester PD headquarters.  This also turned out to be in enough time to browse through Superchrist's distro box, for good and ill; I had to break my long-standing rule on generally not buying anything (like 12" vinyl) that cannot be jammed into my coat until the end of the gig, but I had to do it in order to pick up the reissue of The Lord Weird Slough Feg's first album, which you really do not just walk away from and assume a copy will still be in the bin after four hours in the company of the kind of people who come out to a Superchrist gig.  I bit the bullet, nabbed it plus a Barbatos live disc and Headbanger on CD, then decided that as long as Rampant Decay hadn't started yet, I could just go bung the records in the trunk and not have to worry about carrying them around for the rest of the night.  It's a little false, for weird and unrealistic definitions of false, but it worked, and I got back in in time for RxDx to start.

Rampant Decay [5/7]
Despite the circumstances, Rampant Decay stepped up and smashed out a characteristically violent, explosive set of their patented dirtbag-oi/crust/powerviolence blend.  In comparison to past samples, this one was more punk-driven if a little reduced, and the set kind of wore down in places, but some of this is likely not having a live bassist (or second guitar) in the ranks for this one, putting more of the weight on Pat, some of it may be that the drummer sliced his hand up before the show (though I'm the wrong person to ask about drumming issues), but a lot of it is likely the height of the stage; typically, bands like this don't play a lot of gigs this high up and this far from the audience.  Rich was still stalking around like a madman, pushing his damnedest to get that energy out to the floor, but in some ways it doesn't feel quite like a Rampant Decay show if people aren't actually getting pushed over.

In the process of picking up some gear off the band later (no shirt, but last year's CD-EP, the new split with The Kruds, and a pile of stickers for distro), I realized that the info I'd been giving was out of date: it's a lot closer to three months than four that I shove off for the festivals for the last time.  That RFM is still out there, and is going to get more publicized.

Panzerbastard [6/7]
It was Superchrist on tour, but it was Panzerbastard who probably got the most action on the floor, grinding out a punishing set of their lows-heavy thrash'n'roll.  They changed up the lineup a little -- Bobby was out, allegedly on account of Fresh Kill practice -- but kept the violence rolling through both old stuff and new.  Keith didn't smash anything up this time (well, aside from me after I got up too fast and clocked him one on the chin with my shoulder armor, but that was before the show started), but the band laid glorious waste to the eardrums of all and sundry.

Andrew wins tonight's edition of None So Kvlt.  Seriously, Infernal Majesty?  I almost wish I'd had more free time in Canada (as opposed to sleeping and point-to-point drivetime) to confirm how few people even in Canada listen to Infernal Majesty.

Nightbitch [5.5/7]
I hadn't seen this band in ages, and in the intervening time they'd dropped Phil, whose characteristic vocals had been one of the major hooks for the band initially, so it was going to be interesting to see how they handled themselves as a three-piece.  The result was pretty cool, if a little constrained; Nightbitch continues to be not your average doom band, and more strongly connected to the roots of the style in occult '70s rock, but the feel on this set was of more that they could still do with these members.  This was a cool set even with the subdued feel; maybe just needs more runtime and more strippers, but cool music all the same.

Superchrist [6/7]
Over the course of this set, Superchrist kept up a super-high level of energy with absolute consistency.  The audience responded to their rocked-up Motorhead grooves in similar fashion, keeping things pumping and violent start to finish.  There were a lot of songs that kept in that internal consistency -- Superchrist songs tend to sound like other Superchrist songs with fairly small degrees of separation -- but the point of this set, and of bands like Superchrist, is a lot more to make party than to produce something for contemplation, and party is what they delivered, in spades.

Eventually, though, the party had to wind up, and after an audience-enforced encore, I picked up a shirt and Holy Shit from Superchrist and breakables off Rampant Decay, then hit the road.  I managed to get back right at 2, but as usual work prevented anything getting finalized on this front for too long.  Next was Inquisition, hopefully documented faster.

Engorged with Scaphism, Coathanger Abortion, and Demoralizer [Ralph's, Worcester, 4/19/2012]

So after appropriate deliberations and some rather unnecessary construction delays -- it's not as bad as it was five years ago, but warm weather still means that 290 starts turning more or less useless after dark -- I decided on and got out to Ralph's for this one rather than in to Great Scott for Revocation.  Tennessee is farther than Virginia, and Coathanger Abortion relatively less prominent than Cannabis Corpse, so there was a little more attraction in the non-local bands on this one --especially since I ended up missing their Sunday gig via exhaustion and typhoon warnings.

With the roadwork, I ended up in just about 9, well enough time to check out the merch options and such before the bands started playing.

Demoralizer [5/7]
As per last time, but possibly a little sharper, Demoralizer smashed out a short but quality set of crunchy grindcore flavored with prominent death metal elements.  The band seemed to wind down a little as the set went on, but with the energy that's required for their stuff, and the still-visible (ok, only when the bassist had his pants down) damage remaining from Bobfest the previous weekend, this is readily understandable.  This was still a good, solid, set, though, as attested to by the speed at which their few demos disappeared by the end of the night.

In here I did most of my local merch; I planned to get an Engorged shirt to go with the Scaphism shirt/CD tour pack, but ended up not sticking around long enough or not pulling the trigger fast enough.  Oh well; not like this band, having revived, is likely to imminently go away.

Coathanger Abortion [6/7]
Actual reactions after their set: "Wow, I thought Tennessee kind of sucked!" "Apparently, except for Coathanger Abortion!"  Anyone who thinks New England isn't as short-sighted and parochial as anywhere else, if not more so, has not lived here.  Regardless, this was as intimated a balls-out kickass set of grind-tinged brutal death metal; Robby introduced them as "Southern-fried death-grind", but any kind of gimmickry was thankfully absent, the sound filling out, despite the lack of a bassist, in the vein of a more technical Lividity or a less slammy Suffocation.  They played right up to the available limits, and got a good strong reaction from the crowd; hopefully, the same was the case in Boston yesterday.

After ChA wrapped up, I ended up picking up not a shirt (on the double false premise that I'd have to find belt real estate to sling an Engorged shirt through, and that I'd be seeing them again in less than a week), but did get their current record as well as a Lividity CD they had out for distro, one of the guys in the band having filled in for Lividity live on some recent tour.  I also picked up a decent pile of stickers for Ausstrahlung; the intent is to concentrate on New England bands, but good under-recognized music from elsewhere is worth promoting as well, especially when there's a sonic and member tie-in with Lividity, who as noted in the past are huge in east Germany for no single concrete reason.

Scaphism [6/7]
The kickoff show for their current tour, this was a solid, pumping, set with a huge hometown crowd response.  They stuck mostly to the Festering Human Remains material, but did pull in some "newer" stuff...which since it's been in the setlist for the better part of a year, is a lot better described as "wasn't finely tuned enough to make it onto the CD when it was recorded", but whatever.  They "closed" with "Slowly Digesting....", as they tend to do -- and then ended up doing another song about rape afterwards because they had time left, and also because rape and Star Wars, it is the meat and drink of this band.

I had put the hanzi for the arbitrary number pasted next to the band name above on my wrist, and collected the impressions that made the basis of the writeup, before I cut open the pro shrinkwrap on Scaphism's new record, so this is the last observation on the band that is indisputably uncolored by the self-satisfied ego boost of getting into the FHR thankslist (under another alias (hence probably for overseas promotion), don't look for this one).  They'll be back from the road on the 30th, so start looking at the writeup from that show for signs of corruption and observer-compromise.

Engorged [5.5/7]
Wenn Altmeister, aus dieser sicht weniger Meister, mehr alt.  This was still a good set, but as down as I've seen from Engorged since the reunion.  Some of it may be the novelty wearing off, but I don't think so; in this case, they had the difficult task of following a really prime Scaphism set under conditions where their guitar solos weren't cutting through the mix reliably.  They did get people pumped up with "In League With Satan" at the end, but we've had better sets, overall, from Engorged, and likely will again in the future.

Virginal bleeding during Engorged's setup.  The blood and stage dressing was a nice touch, even if it was a little directly reminiscent of Fires of Old.

Engorged also finished up fairly late, as least as far as Metal Thursdays have been ending recently, and there were limits on how far past one in the morning I was going to stick and wait to be able to pick up a shirt.  Another time; in the present I hit the road, got back in time to get to sleep by 3, and would have been able to roll on into the Sunday show if everywhere I went on Saturday (Record Store Day and El Clasico, who knew) had not been dehydratingly full of people.  As it is, Superchrist tomorrow and then probably nicht till Inquisition.

Old James with Seax and Crypter (and kind of Sonic Pulse) [Ralph's, Worcester, 4/17/2012]

The sun was still going down as I headed out, and the light wasn't completely gone by the time I got into Ralph's. Summer is a'comin' in, arise, arise. Despite the less familiar environment, this wsn't actually all that early, and despite the three-band (declared) lineup, it wasn't too long before Crypter snuffed out the candles at their merch stand (fire safety: wicked metal) and hit the stage.

Crypter [5/7]

Since last time, Crypter's solidified a little, gotten somewhat more uniformly thrashy, and ditched their hand-drawn scrims. The result was a concrete step up; they still have a couple issues with riffs feeling pasted together, and some songs are significantly better composed than others, but the band's also starting to assert a sense of self beyond the fusion of their interests, and they're also not really following on from the rest of the thrash revival except via echoes of Witchaven. While those Angelenos are fusing Dark Angel with Mayhem, Crypter's take on that influence pull is more of adding Damned In Black to early Death, and the blend is a little smoother at this point when it was before. When they finally get to the point of having stuff recorded, it's definitely going to be something to watch for.

Fallout from the war. (I can do this, the drummer in question is filling in and was wearing a Title Fight shirt.) Despite a modest six-piece kit, Crypter's drummer played with stick-destroying violence through their whole set. There are pieces of at least four and perhaps as many as five drumsticks on the floor; on the last song it looked like he was playing on one hand with the butt end of a stick he'd smashed the tip off of.

Seax [6/7]

I was interested to see how Seax was going to sound with a second guitar, but literally 30 seconds into "Need For PeenSpeed", Mick blew a string out, and didn't get back up and tuned until the end of "Molten Iron". There were other technical difficulties -- blown strings, a stage barely big enough for five members with these energy levels, toilet paper, the worst and lamest pun exchange in the history of the world, and an audience obsessed with yelling "PENIS" over any lyrics or title that it would scan against -- but Seax came through them without anyone smashing their headstock off or getting punched. The second guitar, as usual, thickens up the sound, allowing Matt more room to drop critical bass bombs all over everything instead of just sitting in to keep the rhythm going while Hell solos. It wasn't the smoothest of outings, but it was a hella kickass performance, and there's every expectation that Seax will continue to improve as they work over more of their old stuff for two guitars.

Mick gets jumped into Seax, for values of 'jumped' to include 'covered in toilet paper'. This, like the penis jokes, started during Crypter and reached its apogee here.

Old James [6/7]

Aggressor was supposed to be playing this originally when they were on tour, but when that tour was cancelled due to another tour supporting Annihilator back in Canada, the half of the band that isn't in Old James and hadn't booked an off-date in Boston at Bobfest two days previously didn't bother coming down. The Stephensons, though, came out regardless and smashed through a class set with their new project as long as they were going to be driving back anyways, including a couple Aggressor songs despite the minor problem of the bassist not actually knowing the material. Graham, though, is a badass and was able to play off Brian's changes, aided by the fact that if it's thrash metal, an open E is often an acceptable default. The Old James stuff came off better, southern- and alt-tinged thrash reminiscent of what a lot of bands were doing at the turn of the '90s: never explicitly following Faith No More, Pantera, or Alice In Chains, but definitely picking up on the strands that went into these bands at that time. It was cool stuff, if in significant contrast to the leather-and-spikes speedthrash on the rest of the bill and that we'd gotten on the Aggressor cuts.

Graham reading Brian's hands to try and figure out what comes next in "Million Dollar Slaughter".

Old James, though, is kind of a new band, and ran out of material after about six or seven tunes, after which it became kind of a jam session, rotating members out over a devolving sequence of "Graham learns songs off Kill 'Em All in the process of playing them live" until it ended up with him jamming along to "Motorbreath" with 3/5 of Seax. The Old James/Aggressor set kind of gave up the ghost at this point, but with six minutes left and all the members in the venue with their (or kind of their) gear, there was still time for...

Sonic Pulse flipping out and flailing all over the place.

Sonic Pulse [4/7]

To an even greater extent than the tail end of Old James, this is where things truly got to basement show levels. Sonic Pulse, featuring members of Seax and Skull Hammer, killed off the last six minutes of the night in an orgy of toilet paper, balls-out moshing, and disorganized, under-practiced speed/thrash metal that did improve as everybody got warmed up and the audience got distracted cleaning each other out in the pit. This is probably an absolutely unrepresentative sample of the band, but that's yet to be seen, probably in another month or two when they're actually ready to start playing out for real.

As Sonic Pulse stopped, the staff started throwing people out, and I hit the road. The recovery was a little tough, but I should be back in fine fettle for Engorged tonight -- provided that my aversion to Great Scott keeps me out of seeing Revocation, the late-breaking other option.

Bobfest V day 1 [O'Brien's, Allston, 4/14/2012]

One way or another, I overcame some bad decisions to get over to the venue mostly in time, and battled most of the way to the end; I had to sacrifice the second day due to recuperation time, but it's better to get through this now rather than in four months. I'm not in festival shape yet, and now, rather than bumming my way through central Germany, is when to realize this and start getting back into fighting trim. If I'd been tenting locally rather than having to drive, I'd've finished, then taken a lot of day 2 in as well, but the principles are important enough to deserve the emphasis.

The specific principles, of course, are pretty easy. 1), don't start drinking Guinness on an empty stomach at 11AM after boozing the night before. 2), don't sesh it up at the fitba bar if you have anything else you need to do the rest of the day. Especially when there's a lag between the FA Cup games and the Spanish league kickoffs and people start sending rounds around out of sheer boredom.

I ended up leaving the Phoenix only a little later and a little drunker than planned, and the hike over the bridges was easy enough, so I got more or less straight in -- despite getting my steel taken off me at the door, which was unnecessary but absolutely correct -- and saw most of Barren Oak's set. I was kinda bummed to miss Set, but them, I'll likely have another shot at seeing sooner.

Barren Oak [5.5/7]

As noted, I didn't get the whole of Barren Oak's set, but what I was in for was quite good, definitely proving the proposition that black metal -- if, admittedly, droning third-wavey black metal -- can be carried off by bass and drums as well as drums and guitar. The shorter set and shorter exposure within that set may have helped with the focus -- if some stuff was repeated from the start, I wasn't in the building initially to hear it -- but on balance this was a good performance that I'd rather have heard more of; hopefully Alex can get another drummer sorted in the near future (this was the drummer's last gig before leaving) and continue on with the project. Fuck black metal, hail black metal!

In here I went and picked up dinner off Asia Wok again, and managed to get back and ensconced in the corner with my chow before Rozamov started up. I could probably have picked better food for avoiding exhaustion later (this ended up being 16 hours of activity and about 10 beers iirc on an Irish breakfast, a vegan mapo tofu, and a grilled cheese sandwich), but this also is a lesson for the future.

Rozamov [5/7]

I hadn't seen this band before, and accordingly went in with absolutely flat expectations. They turned in a nice but kind of undiversified set of good, functional doom metal that kept the audience grooving, even if it didn't break down a lot of barriers. It'll be interesting to see how and where they develop from here, but at this point Rozamov're still just one among many good heavy-doom bands in the area.

Dead Languages [5/7]

Dead Languages bent the doom flow back in more of a grind direction, turning in a solid set that ultimately came off a little unfulfilling. They might have used more runtime, and some of it was the band sticking closer to the songs as structured rather than letting their energy out, but both cases are probably on the same root cause; as Dawn mentioned later, they're working out a new drummer, and while he was able to learn the set right quick, there's always going to be a bedding-in period replacing members. Dead Languages' material still kicks ass, and it'll be more surprising if they don't kick on from here and take it up a notch in the near future than if they do.

It was probably in here that I got yelled at for looking like I was nodding off at the bar, and headed outside to cool down. Apologies to the O'B's staff; in the future, I'll eat better and spend less time swapping blackout stories with Ethiopian dudes before all-day shows.

Lazar House [5/7]

Coming back in, most of Faces of Bayon were setting up for what would ultimately not be a Faces set, in a slot other than where they were scheduled originally. Their drummer's having some health issues (get well soon) and wasn't able to play, so Matt and Ron shifted their timeslot around and brought over this project, which was a drone/noise experiment that drew enough from Faces of Bayon's sludgy, atmospheric, funeral-doom side to retain ratable metal content. The band, obviously, would much rather have played as Faces of Bayon, and the audience would probably rather have seen that performance, but the Lazar House material was a cool interlude outside the main run of the bill, and definitely cool to be able to see live.

Between the near-sellout crowd and the general environmental heat (summer decided to come to Boston this weekend), it was flat boiling inside, so between sets from here on it was out to the sidewalk to chill down, sing random stretches of Blind Guardian songs, and see the members of the new Coffin Birth (headlining this show) lineup meet each other for the first time. Festivals, how it is.

KYOTY [6.5/7]

This performance was the highlight of the night -- at least as long as I could stay -- and compensated by its awesomness for reinforcing the fact that I should have been kicking myself around the block for missing them last time. KYOTY (Keep Your Opinions To Yourself, formally) laid down a set of deep and punishing instrumental doom metal that definitely benefitted from the band's atmospheric tweaks -- lights off, supplemental lighting under the bass drum -- but would probably have been 90-95% as cool in a random parking lot in bright sunlight. The band delivered at a next level on both composition and volume, and pretty much crushed everything in front of them. Should you have missed them here, or on other occasions, you should be kicking yourself as well.

Forced Asphyxiation [6/7]

I hadn't seen this band in the last six months, and in the meantime they've taken several solid steps up: the practice of a near-three-week tour, and also bringing in Tom from Soul Remnants on second guitar. Adding the second guitar has really taken up the power of the band to another level, working more malice and violence into the more diversified and matured songwriting. Forced is still mostly about weed, and most of their best and best-received material is still about weed, but they're closer to Cannibal Corpse than Cannabis Corpse, developing as a generalist brutal death metal band rather than a one-note novelty act. They're also developing into a seriously, seriously good death metal band; when they eventually get a record out, or even a demo that wasn't recorded live, it's going to be essential for eastern New England, and pretty much an automatic pickup should you see these guys on the road.

Hessian (PA) [6/7]

They got their fog cut off, and their candle snuffed, but the Pennsylvanian Hessian didn't need these to set up a smashing first-class set of blackened thrashing music. Those outside Boston, or those less stuck into our underground, would probably liken them to a blacker Skeletonwitch rather than to Nachzehrer, if they'd had more members in common with Razormaze longer, but the first comparison misses out on a nontrivial degree of the power that this band delivered. As much as I like the Maine Hessian, it's hard to see, on the evidence of this set, the eventual epic mask bout for the name going any way but south. (Whether you disagree, or think that it'd easily go to one side or the other, the verdict's the same: you have more of another Hessian to go listen to.) As shown on this sample, Hessian do tour around on the East Coast, so if you miss this band by accident, or worse, by intent, it's going to go on your permanent record.

After Hessian, I was pretty much beat, and flipped a coin to see whether I'd try to tough it out for Alekhine's Gun and Coffin Birth, or head off and get some sleep, then try to come back in for day 2. It came up "head out", and so I did, stumping the long way back and managing to avoid falling asleep on the drive home. Unfortunately, Celtic lost in the Cup on Sunday, I got bummed out, then lost out to heat and motivation when it came time to decide how the hell I was getting in to Radio. Regrets by the score, but lessons learned -- and hopefully in time for a thick stretch of shows coming, with Aggressor tonight, Engorged Thursday, Dysentery Sunday, Superchrist next Tuesday, and Inquisition next Saturday, with another Metal Thursday in the mix as well. That RFM means I have to do better getting to shows -- and doing better at getting to shows means I'll be more effective getting the gathered materials out come August.

2012 - The Final ChapTour RFM

This is the RFM (Request For Merch) for the 2012 summer festival tour. There are significant differences between this and prior years due to itinerary changes.

Partly because I've soured on the festival and partly because I didn't get a ticket before it sold out (the first contributing to the second), I'm not going to Wacken this year. I'm starting at Party.San and continuing on to Summer Breeze, which pushes out the deadline a little and decidedly changes the complexion of the stuff I can take over.

This is because Party.San is a wicked, wicked DIY festival. I've described it in the past as "the world's biggest basement show", and based on the experience of last year, it is entirely possible that I will clear out everything I carry over before leaving the P.SOA festival grounds. Virtually everyone you meet at Party.San is into underground metal, many of them are in bands, and the appetite they have for new DIY stuff from odd corners of the globe is almost insatiable. This means that as long as I have stuff to distro, it needs to be stuff that will be in demand at Party.San. Some will probably survive to Summer Breeze, but I don't want to tell people "sure, I've been giving stuff away nonstop for the last two days, but now all I have is pop stuff you won't be interested in." Stuff that I could push hard at Wacken and take advantage of a large population to overcome the low chances of successful distro will not fly here.

So here is the deal. This is Germany, land of Defeated Sanity, Bethlehem, Desaster, Ahab, and Metal Inquisitor. If I see your band at a local show, you are probably OK for export. Give me your stuffs. If I haven't seen your band yet, for whatever reason, check the Party.San lineup and see how many bands' fanbases you'd likely appeal to. If you think you'll fit in, send me a link to a recent sample of your stuff (you can do this in the comments on this post), and I'll check it out. OMG ELITISM. If you don't like it, strap up a pack and do a ritual about itget on a plane yourself.

Space is expected to be limited. I actually went over the limit last year and had to repack some stuff. The upside of that is that I do have a bunch of surplus paper CD sleeves in case I get stuff in full-height or half-height cases. First come first served, no vinyl, no buttons unless you have nothing else, and please try to avoid sending shirts. Contact info already on your stuff or space for me to write it on very preferred. Give me your out-of-date, your mismatched, the dregs of your merch bucket yearning to breathe free. Should I not manage to hand everything out, any surplus will be returned (unless you're like, "no, leave this in the bathrooms in the Munich airport if it comes to that, we don't want it back").

This will be updated periodically as the deadline - end of July - approaches.




-------------
UPDATE 2012-06-05: first tentative show schedule:





Jun 5 (Tue) - HORNA, KOMMANDANT, BOG OF THE INFIDEL, NACHZEHRER, SARCOMANCY - Great Scott's (Allston, MA)
Jun 7 (Thu) - METAL THURSDAY CLXVI: ABNORMALITY, NAEGLERIA, SOUL REMNANTS, SOUL ANNIHILATION - Ralph's Diner (Worcester, MA)
Jun 10 (Sun) - SIX FEET UNDER / "Worcester Deathfest" - the Palladium (Worcester, MA)
Jun 11 (Mon) - Spitting Black, Composted, Deathamphetamine, Dick Move - Midway Cafe (Jamaica Plain, MA)
Jun 14 (Thu) - Born of Fire: Scaphism, Blood Of The Gods, I Am The Trireme (PA) - O'Briens Pub (Allston, MA)
Jun 21 (Thu) - Metal Thursday CLXVII: Machinage [BRAZIL], Sonic Pulse, Endless Decay, Red Blade - Ralph's Diner (Worcester, MA)
Jun 26 (Tue) - IRON MAIDEN, Alice Cooper - Tweeter Center (Mansfield, MA)
Jun 30 (Sat) - BLACK PYRAMID, KYOTY, HESSIAN AND WARM - Ralph's Diner (Worcester, MA)
Jul 25 (Wed) - FEAR FACTORY, VOIVOD, Cattle Decapitation, Misery Index, Revocation, Havok - the Palladium (Worcester, MA)
Jul 26 (Thu) - Metal Thursday: Mausoleum [PA], Engorge [NJ], Blessed Offal +TBA - Ralph's Diner (Worcester, MA)


I probably will not make all of these, and more will be added.  There will be an actual new update post at the start of July with the schedule from that point on.

Blood of the Gods with Excrecor, Ramius, and Lore [Ralph's, Worcester, 4/5/2012]

Minimally impeded by traffic, I got out to Worcester pretty early, but still more or less on time, enough to unwind, notice the B's had gone a further two up since I left the sub shop back in the 128 belt, and start drinking before the bands went on.

Lore [5/7]

With what felt like a longer, and an indisputably more developed set than last time, Lore took a big step forward here in terms of both quality and metalness. The band's focus was a lot more apparent, and if it's still amenable to easy description, you're not going to go wrong with a band that is basically Behold... the Arctopus with both more prominent post-hardcore roots and a tighter hold on Atheist (and to a lesser extent, the rest of the first wave of art-death). There's still room for improvement, if you can tell that the guitar's prone to filling stuff in with doublet progressions through moderately obscure scales, or that a few riffs (such as bands like this have them, anyway) in "Black and White" are cut almost pattern-exact from Arctopus material, but they're definitely on the right track, and there's so much raw talent obvious in the band that further development is pretty much guaranteed. Depending on the particular direction, they may get more or fewer metal bills in the future, but this is definitely a band to keep an eye on.

This turned out to be "underrated band makes large improvements night", as will be seen in the rest of this post, only breaking down slightly on the headliners.

Ramius [5.5/7]

Their first show was pretty decent, but Ramius have only taken it up from there. This set presented a convincing picture of a band that have their feet thoroughly under them, and have the potential, at least, to make some significant waves. The Death references that characterized that prior show have been pared back, both by song selection and by changes to the material; those that remain still feel forced, but more importantly less consistent, as the bulk of their set was going in a completely different direction, a slightly less technical and more atmospheric blend of modern death metal, like if Hypocrisy spent a lot more time listening to Kalmah, or vice versa. There are still some rough edges, and with a band this new it's not yet set in stone which way they're going, let alone going to go, but the potential is definitely there. Very good stuff if they can keep it going, hammer the burrs out, and get it on record.

In the interest of completeness and the futile pursuit of objectivity, it should be noted that the arbitrary number pasted next to the band name does not include adjustments for a 95% pitch-perfect Primordial cover. "The Coffin Ships" is fairly long and pretty tough, but ultimately it's still a cover, and a pretty obvious one at that. (Other bands wishing to pander to openly biased fenians in the audience may wish to consider "The Soul Must Sleep" or "Death of the Gods", then reconsider based on the fact that this song saw the largest audience outflow of any single point in the night.)

Excrecor [5.5/7]

Other people in the audience shouted at the start that it didn't matter, but it certainly did: 3/4 of Excrecor turned in a good, solid performance, but one that was undermined by the fact that their bassist wasn't there. The band remains good enough, and good enough at songwriting, that they were able to overcome a lot of the deficit, but ultimately Excrecor writes their stuff for two guitars, one bass, and a drumset, and expects that it's going to be performed that way as well. It's good for the band that said material is good enough to mostly survive not being performed that way, but out in the audience most people, even those who most loudly wonder what bass players are for, even, would probably rather that it was. This was still a good performance, and in any metal band, yes, you are going to get the rhythm guitar line doubling up the bass a fair bit of the time, but the improvement Excrecor's made over previous outings was masked by being under-strength.

In here I did basically all of my merch; no Excrecor shirts on offer, so I picked up a swack of BotG stickers for a nominal fee, mostly for the purpose of passing out this summer. RFM coming, seriously.

Blood of the Gods [5.5/7]

The specious pointscore may not pick it up, but BotG continued the general improvement wave, smashing out a full, rounded set of their characteristicly dense, sludgy, punk-infected death-grind. The crowd, for whatever reason, didn't respond as strongly as might have been anticipated, but the music itself was still crushing, and delivered with what seemed like more energy than I've seen from the band previously, likely from actually having a stage big enough for everyone to move around on; I haven't seen them this high off the floor, or with proper space for a five-piece, since they opened for Morne last year, and back then it was like 1 in the afternoon. Solid, solid stuff, and the sooner they get another record together the better.

Show concluded, I beat feet for the highway and managed to get back in what I thought was good order. Family turbulence and being on call this week have delayed this, and will cause me to miss Summoning Hate tonight, but everything is wrapped up in time for Bobfest.

Rememberance of Antique Pictures

(Note: no Oathean content in this post. One of my few regrets from South Korea.)

In the process of cleaning up my antediluvian phone, I found a bunch of pictures from this show, when I apparently had the idea of adding grainy and overly-dark images to these piles of inaccurate and often ill-informed words, an idea that did not survive the 2010 summer tour. Having completely forgotten that I had taken these pics while overseas, I didn't add them to the original post at the time, and now, eighteen and more months later, adding them in there would guarantee that they'd be seen by exactly no one. (So wait, why am I doing this any differently?) Anyway, almost two years out of date and crappy to start with, here they are.

Holding Steady The Heartbeat of Hell digs in deep.

Mowgli flipping out. (Yes, also Wren.)

Necronomichrist setting up.

In more presently relevant news, this:

Tickets are in; formal RFM will go out in a week or so once I get it written.

Seax with Amadis, Avernus Ortus, and Krakatoa [Ralph's, Worcester, 3/29/2012]

Despite some non-promising-looking construction and nearly getting crunched by a semi coming off the Pike, I got over in decent order and not too long before the bands started. It was getting towards the end of a long day that had started earlier than anticipated, so I was a little ground down, but this rapidly took care of itself as the venue started to fill up in earnest and the first bands went on.

Krakatoa [5/7]

Someone is going to have to eventually make up a real word for this band's style of modern-God Dethroned black/melodeath mix, as the conventional ones are running a little short, and there's no shortage of modern bands playing around with the style. "Extreme metal" gets kicked around, but I refuse to redefine a term this general to the stuff in that subclass that isn't strictly black, death, or grind...and a lot of the bands claiming the label are not exactly extreme in any real sense. This was a decent set of decent music, if a little handicapped by technical difficulties. Most of those, though, arose from the PA trying to manage Steve's borgbass; hopefully, they'll be back with demos, where this won't be an issue.

Borgbass in action -- YOUR KEYBOARDS WILL BE ASSIMILATED!

Avernus Ortus [6/7]

They were more matched to the rest of the bill originally, before In Human Form dropped and Seax filled in, but didn't let their accidental odd-duck status stop them from delivering a punishing set of positively slam-hostile technical brutality. Even when it would be easy and consonant to dig in and chug away, Avernus refuse the temptation and do something brain-breakingly hard. It is flat awesome, and if you wish that Hate Eternal was less accessible or that Goreality occasionally played outside New Bedford, this is definitely a band to watch for.

Attendees agreed; at the conclusion of A.O's set, there was a short and sharp run on their demos -- which were conspicuously absent last time -- so immediate as to suggest Necrophagist at NEMHF '06. Said record is definitely worth it; not quite up to their live presentation, but still a kickass chunk of death metal, promising nothing but good things for whenever they get enough good songs written and perfected to get up to a full-length.

Amadis [6/7]

The amount of black leather on stage was a little over the top, and so many songs about heavy metal was just unnecessary. But Amadis is just so fucking good that this set was never going to end up anywhere else ratingswise. Lightly progressive but mostly traditional, this came out as a straight scream-n-shred-fest that got the floor nice and turbulent for the first time; you'd generally expect more mosh for the preceding death metal band out of a Metal Thursday crowd, but as noted this bill ended up pulling in a more trad audience -- and more importantly, it's very seldom that bands before the third have a drunk enough audience to get major motion. Flat killer all the way around.

No armor, no top hat, but still silly. The highlighted area is either a sporran or a lace-up codpiece.

Seax [6/7]

The power of experience; Seax were able to carry a headlining set of all originals and neither over- nor under-run the allotted slot. The band continues to ride that fine line between clever and stupid; their old-school ideas never coming off as dishonest, but with the band acknowledging that this is a nostalgia trip rather than 1982 itself, and that they might as well have somee fun with it. The trolls who were promoting this gig on New England's premier metal sitesource for dicks and abortions by bamming up the easily-excited Carmine, and anyone else who gave this one a pass, missed not only a pretty killer set of stripped-down old-school speed metal to cap off Avernus' underground fundamentalism and Amadis' Priest channeling, but also said frontman rubbing his spandex-covered dick all over the front row. This may have been the first non-ironic use of spandex pants by a local-level Massachusetts metal band in the last 20 years, but as long as Seax carry on, it's not likely to be the last.

Matt, not wearing spandex and not rubbing his dingus on people, but still "Living Above The Law".

It felt a little early leaving, but exhaustion kicked in hard despite getting back a little before 2 AM. That pushed this writeup out from Friday -- and then four discs' worth of Party.San history arrived on Saturday and delayed it further. I can has foreshadowing?

Parasitic Extirpation with Blessed Offal and Blood of the Gods [O'Brien's, Allston, 3/8/2012]

With February written off due to sickness, weather, on-call, and getting sent to Canada, and then having to miss Acrassicauda on Monday for reasons of brokeness, it was incumbent to get out to one of the shows going off on this date; I wanted to see Barren Oak out at Metal Thursday as well, but the return of Parasitic was closer and the overall bill slightly more compelling. So it was down in to Boston, and a brief hike over in kit just slightly too hot for the climate; it'll be another month or so before I can wear my warm-weather rig out without a hoodie under it and reliably not freeze on the hike back at 2AM.

Inside, good company, The Exorcist, and shortly after the Bruins wrapped up a 3-1 win over the Sabres that looked a lot closer than it was well into the third period, the bands started up.

Blood of the Gods [5/7]

BotG got things started off with a bang, powering through a kinda-short but still hammering set of their characteristic sludge-punk-infected death metal. They remain pretty much at some point equidistant from both Morne and Entombed, but from show to show over the available sample space, there's been a continuously increasing sense of the band defining something within this style that's identifiably theirs alone. I'm not sure they're quite there yet, but the trajectory so far is uniformly positive, and it's not hard to see them carving out a fairly prominent niche for themselves in the near future. Good stuff any way you cut it.

Blessed Offal [5.5/7]

Blessed Offal also continues to impress, putting out an absolutely graveling set of downtempo brutality flavored with Incantation-style blackened bits, and a few passages really suggestive of early Cianide. The deep and vicious well of early/mid-'90s Midwestern death metal is seldom plumbed around these parts, which makes it that much more of an attraction that Blessed Offal's doing it this well. This set also felt a little short, but I'd put that down more to perceptions than any lack of material.

Parasitic Extirpation [6/7]

This was the real acid test; due to various reasons, I hadn't seen Parasitic with the new lineup yet, and was curious to see how the hell this was going to work out. Major lineup surgery always has its risks, and here was Parasitic Extirpation turning over not only the vocals, but also swapping in Boarcorpse's rhythm section. There was going to be change, definitely, but the character of that change, and how much of Parasitic-as-of-previous-lineup remained, had to wait to actually see the band. The result was promising, but undeniably different. You're going to get that when you bring in Jim and Damon for, really, any rhythm section: like with Johnny Depp on initially-defined straight roles, they're going to bring their own stylistic twists onto the material, and if you don't want that, you get different guys. Parasitic Extirpation is still a slammy NEDM supergroup, but they're not the same supergroup they were in their last phase of activity. That being said, this was a killer set with a minimum amount of bugs needing still shaken out, Malika (as with her other band) was just as brutal and violent as Tim ever was (and more likely to dive in and mix it up with the front row), and the interplay between Jim, Damon, Blue, and Chris is extremely promising for the future. The next Parasitic Extirpation record is probably not going to sound quite like Casketless, but if this sample is an indicator, it's still going to be kickass death metal and well worth waiting for.

I picked up a shirt and what ended up being not Panzerbastard's EP, Keith having sold out of those in the run of the night. It was a pretty easy hike back, but then work, illness, and other bullshit locked things down for most of the next three weeks, leading to this ill-informed diatribe being as late as it is. Next show is Thursday; sometime in the month after that, (likely) a meta announcement.

Abigail Williams with Nachzehrer, Dysentery, and Mythology [Ralph's, Worcester, 1/31/2012]

Not being a Thursday, I didn't have as much cleanup to do at work and as a consequence got bored faster and started out earlier. I accordingly got out earlier, chawed the fat with various dudes from the Boston-area openers, drank an extra beer, and in all ways killed more time than absolutely necessary while the bands got set up to go on. Soon enough, though, Mythology was ready, and things got rolling.

Mythology [5.5/7]
The intervening weeks have done the band good; Mythology came out faster, tighter, harder, and better than last time; there were a few desynchs and a couple places where the sound might have used another guitar to keep the rhythm churning, but this was a step up from last time and definitely within the margin of error as regards replicating the power that they present on record. In the first slot, they didn't have the time for as long a set, but kept it vital, with a new song or two in the mix with the stuff from The Impaler, and matching up pretty well. Chris/Gallows expressed the hope that the next time they came back, they'd have a new record out; hopefully, this is more from "we've got it mostly written and will be recording in the immediate future" and less from "we've played here twice in the last 30 days, Chris is gonna put us on OFF THE LIST for like two years". There is, as often noted, kind of an oversupply of good metal bands in this part of the country, and the MT orgas do try to rotate through them as consistently as they can, but there are a lot of Metal Thursdays and MT-branded shows in the calendar, and it's not impossible that Mythology might be back before the leaves fall, especially if they can get a new record done and out by the end of the summer.

In the break, I picked up two records from Abigail Williams, because I wanted to support the touring band, was not down for vinyl, and without listening to their current iteration was not going to endorse them by adding to my shirt pile. At least one of these records was a critical mistake. I haven't listened to the other one yet. More on this further down.

Dysentery [7/7]
Whether despite or because of the fact that they were singularly ill-matched to the rest of the bill (Drew noted beforehand that "this is the grimmest show we've played on in, like, ever"), Dysentery came out with all guns blazing and smashed up the crowd with an explosive, near perfectly-pitched set of tooth-shattering slam-death. Yes, this was completely the wrong audience, and yes, the pit action was so pitiful that Will didn't even bother hectoring the crowd to move around more, but the actual musical performance delivered was complete top class. Via almost perfect lock-in between the band members and skullcrushing levels of absolute volume, Dysentery imposed their will on the audience and left people if not rapt in awe, at least too stunned to resist. The skill and professionalism levels in this band are at just ridiculous levels for a band that still has not quite gotten out of the regional DM underground; expect sets this killer when you see them, expect pit violence on a completely different level, and expect that Internal Devastation and more touring with more performances this good will get Dysentery more national sooner rather than later.

I did get shirts from Dysentery and Nachzehrer, via the perpetually attractive combo of 1) band is killer and 2) design kicks ass. I have far too many shirts and need to purge them in the intermediate future, but as long as good bands keep putting together cool designs, I keep getting stuck buying more of them.

Nachzehrer [6.5/7]
Nachzehrer's sound is really and immediately different when cut down to a four-piece, and there were parts in this set where the absence of Erik's guitar was really, really felt. That being said, though, the material that they brought out was so strong that even with the reduced instrumentation, the quality eventually cut through. The 4/5ths of the band present executed damn well, and covered their misses equally well, allowing the writing and composition to do the talking. "...on the shores of Sheol" may not have made it onto the split with Ipsissimus, but if it's a representative sample of that recording session, that only speaks better for the material that is going in, which will hopefully get these thrashing black satanisms into more ears. Class set even under-strength, and the prospect of performances this good with the band's full complement is something to be looked forward to for metalheads along the Yankee part of the 95 corridor.

Before going on to hear about Abigail Williams, it may be worth checking in with my assessment of the band from five years ago, almost to the weekend.

Abigail Williams [6/7]
Score is not adjusted for apparel; if you want to, then THAT'S A FUCKING 50 DKP MINUS!!!, to mix nerd memes. In contrast to everything that had been bruited about previously in regards "symphonic" black metal, what we got was for the most part a Forest Stream cover band influenced heavily by Agalloch, WITTR, and Drudkh. The Cascadian bands don't tour often, and Drudkh and Forest Stream don't tour the US at all, so having this style come by is welcome, but everything Abigail Williams did in this set was so obviously a remanufacturing of that period of Russian black-doom as to make the performance less a set for appreciating and more for cutting apart to see which riffs came from Radigost and which were more like Painful Memories or Mental Home. People who don't happen to have been steeped in this particular subscene might have found this performance less of an academic exercise, but an extremely unscientific sampling of such individuals (sample space=people snarking in the show thread on RTTP post-facto) finds that these people tend not to like Forest Stream as much as I do, which makes it basically a wash.

As briefly alluded to above in a couple places, this performance bore no resemblance to how they were in '07, and also almost no resemblance to how they originally reinvented themselves on record. The following was stuck to the front of my copy of In The Shadow of A Thousand Suns:



















For the bad at reading blurry writing, that last sentence, which reads "For fans of Dimmu Borgir & Emperor.", is the only part of this sticker that is remotely true for the record it was pasted on, mostly because anyone willing to put up with a subpar remake of Covenant's Nexus Polaris album is probably into Emperor and Dimmu. More important than the lack of quality or any kind of interesting material is the fact that this midpoint shows that the band have now reinvented themselves twice (provided the sample from this gig sticks, and was not just a response to getting the fear relative to their ability to outdo Mythology and Nachzehrer). This is like Spinal Tap talking through their transition from skiffle group to Maiden-in-all-but-name, but at least their taste is improving. In '07, they were a subpar Sacrilege, and by dint of this record they were a second-rate Covenant sometime before the end of 2008....and now, at the turn of 2012, they make a passable synthetic Forest Stream substitute. I'm not holding out any great hope that In The Absence of Light will be good or even interesting to listen to (if nothing else, any surprise will be pleasant), but I'm at least glad I got it to get another data point in.


I managed to successfully avoid to crashing into anything in the pea-soup fog coming home, but it's up in the air as to whether I'll make it out to actual Metal Thursday tomorrow. I should, in the abstract, but concretely this is determined by a multivariate equation involving exhaustion, gas levels, and spare cash. We'll see what's next.

Fires of Old with Katahdin, Mythology, and Crypter [Ralph's, Worcester, 1/5/2012]

I got moving out about normal, with a minor delay to gawk at the Bruins kicking the crap out of Calgary in Barca-vs-pub-teams-in-the-cup fashion; it was 5-0 when I left the sub shop at the start of the second period, and 9-0 by the time I got out to Ralph's. The run this team was on, frustrating losses to Vancouver aside, has been just mindblowing.

Beer in, it wasn't too long before the bands started up.

Crypter [4.5/7]
I hadn't seen this band before, though they've been playing out a lot recently, and was concerned that they might be just another thrash-revival band. This fortunately was not the case: Crypter does have a strong revivalist streak, but the world could use more young bands who are thoroughly convinced that Scream Bloody Gore is the best record in the history of ever. The ideas are on the right track, even if the writing and arrangements aren't fully matured yet, and the turn-of-the-century Immortal tone that cut through on their more developed leads made for a nice contrast with the faster and rawer parts. On the evidence of this set, Crypter doesn't quite have it all together yet, but they are frustratingly close, and are going to be damn good when they get themselves shaken out.

There was a bit of longer downtime here while Mythology set up their gear and figured out how to hang their banner off the hardpoints on the Erol Otus-inspired monster backdrop that's become a Metal Thursday regular of late, and I scored some beef jerky and a can of expired, non-reliably nonpoisonous energy drink off Yosh, as did several other people. The beef jerky part, at least; Yosh's jerky is pure class, and most people are too smart to take the free cans of Cocaine.

Mythology [5.5/7]
I'd missed seeing Mythology a couple times here, and was glad to finally be able to not miss a show they were on for stupid reasons. Despite a bit of ring rust, they set out a killer set of Norwegian-inspired black metal with a few Germanic touches, done at a level that wouldn't be greatly out of place from the actual Norwegian second tier (see Keep of Kalessin, Den Saakaldte, etc). The band's currently gearing up to be more active again, which is a good sign not just for more people seeing Mythology, but for how they see them: the slack parts in the set were about 70% down to the band resynching with each other rather than inherent to the music. Good signs.

This is wicked late, but part of the delay is kind of on this band; it took some disciplined recall to work out what their set really was after a solid week of spinning their Impaler record. Why? Look, go listen to "Rebuilding Poenari" and tell me you wouldn't have this stuck in your stereo a week straight.

The whole disc is not quite this good, but it's a lot better than skeptics would expect of a concept album about Dracula by an unsigned black metal band. Definite support.

Katahdin [6/7]
More than the openers who I hadn't heard yet, I'd come out for the last two, and they certainly didn't disappoint. Pure slashing fire, third wave without a hint of hipsterism, and as good a set as I've seen from them so far. They had some major technical difficulties with Kyle blowing a cable or something, but Eric was able to hold down the melodic fort alone, and the set barely took a dip. Straight killer.

In here I did merch, picking up Mythology's Tepes and Impaler records despite the duplication (the first is the demo version of the latter), and not only the new split but also Katahdin's first LP. All of this is highly approved; The Black Hours is about the most diverse BM split you'll hear, and a solid package in the tradition of Black Death.



















Fires of Old's mic stand is now almost completely unhandleable, a jagged upright pile of spikes and barbed wire.

Fires of Old [6.5/7]
Maybe it was the slot allowing more time and thus more old stuff, but this set was a lot rawer than I've seen from these guys lately; the ripping Satyriconesque stuff "of old", though still allowing room for the more expansive Primordialisms of "V" and "Majestic Death". Both sides complemented each other, and the result was another completely killer outing that no amount of wannabe critical detachment could keep off that mark. Still excellent, and the sooner they get some recordings done/available again the better.

From there it was back home, with subsequent shows missed to work, on-call, and work drinking; this is done at last, and next was supposed to be Untombed before the football stress and beer consumption made driving in a nonstarter; fortunately, there's no game next weekend and no shortage of tasty shows coming.

Scaphism with Coffin Birth, Vaporizer, and Xatatax [Ralph's, Worcester, 12/29/2011]

Despite a somewhat late start and traffic starting to pick back up again, I got out in good order, only most of the way through Woods II; this of course being in response to David Gold's passing, as would be a persistent and somber theme on the night. We will not hear these works live again here -- and if we'd thought the same a month ago, it was with the hopeful prospect of grooving on Woods V and scorning hipsters at the Middle East and larger venues further down the line. So it goes.

It was not all, of course, authentic despair, and presently the bands got rolling.

Xatatax [4/7]
I hadn't seen these guys before, but had heard decent things about them, and was interested to see how this was going to shake out. The basic impression was one of a 21st-century, post-underground answer to the Kinks or Blue Cheer, making up for their shortcomings in composition and technicality through loudness. As the set went on, they picked up a little, bringing stronger elements of black metal and hardcore into their fairly basic doom mix, but at this point the band still sounds a little underfinished. They're a young band, and there's no reason that they won't be able to develop the interesting parts of their sound further, but they're not quite there yet. This was a decent opener on a strong bill; it'll be interesting to see how they do next time out.

Vaporizer [6.5/7]
If this band template-cut their sound to Heaven Shall Burn's and wedged doom in where all the NWOSDM parts are in the original, they could not get closer. This isn't a bad thing by any means, though, just self-satisfied back-patting about a comparison that I happened to get right eighteen months ago. In the interim, the band has if anything solidified, further refining their doom-riffs-with-metalcore-delivery style to weapons grade. This outing may not have been as mindblowing as that first time, before my expectations were set, but it definitely felt more precise and replicable: Vaporizer is going to be this good, pretty reliably, whenever you see them, and if it wasn't for the unorthodox way that they approach doom metal, more people would be talking them up as the successor to Black Pyramid's vacated title belt. They're not, really, though; this is a band that stands on its own and should be appreciated for their own significant merits by a lot more people.

I'm not going to put a mark down on Matt's acoustic tribute to Dave and Woods in here; he didn't cover all the riffs or hit exactly the right cadences in the lyrics, but it was a good and valid tribute, scared up in the space of less than a week, from flat nothing, and one that I think Dave would probably have enjoyed and respected. If there's anything you get from Woods, it's the importance of taking things that other people have defined, refusing to be defined by them, and putting your own interpretation down. This was not Woods as Woods has been here before, but it wasn't intended to be: this was Matt Smith and a guitar taking a break to remember and let others remember.

The slack on "flat nothing", also, is mandatory, because Woods was one of those bands that everyone listened to but no one would dream of covering. For all Dave's impressive compositional abilities putting songs together, and his knack for memorable riffs and a biting, artful, turn of phrase, what really drew and will draw metalheads to Woods of Ypres was his gargantuan personal courage as a lyricist, the ability to strip-mine the most intimate highs and lows of his life and set that trauma to music. Who among us has not wrestled with shedding their own "Deadwood", and who has not bounced along the bottom of a "December in Windsor"? This identification gave a lot of people what they felt was a real personal connection to Woods and the man behind the texts, even if they didn't know him personally all that well, or at all, but the respect for that connection, and the respect people had for David in baring his soul that way, meant that nobody had ever sat down and tried to play any of his stuff for themselves past, maybe if that, "A Meeting Place And Time" off Woods I. There's something almost sacrilegious about putting your own interpretation on someone else's personal history; "...Mount Pleasant..." is abstract and well-known, and "You Are Here With Me" is short and nonspecific, making them approachable for a tribute like this. There's no way someone's going to sit down and try to interpret "The Ghosts of Summers Past" or "Into Exile", and that fact is what makes the loss so significant. Other bands will get tributes, and see covers worked into their fans' sets after they cease to be; Woods' material, the band ceasing to be, is in large part never going to be played live again. What we experienced, finally, on those three dates as they got some actual label support and were able to tour across English-speaking North America, has been foreclosed upon for future metalheads with a definite and sobering finality.

Coffin Birth [6/7]
I'm not sure about stabilized, but the Coffin Birth lineup has definitely solidified, for the time being with the additions of solid technicians Dana and Ari alongside Anthony. The result was a finely tuned, professionally processed-out set of blackened death metal, rolling forward with a firm and singular commitment and purpose, and not really getting blown back by the fan that various people in the front row lifted off the stage to blow air on Anthony from different angles with. Getting used to such stage gimmicks may happen with Belphegor, but what's much more relevant is that the band as they are is fully and completely beyond them. Eventually, they're going to get something recorded, and the world beyond New England is going to get a glimpse of the new-forged steel here.

Scaphism [6/7]
Back on home ground, Scaphism kicked out another solid set of straight-ahead brutal death metal, along with the usual banter bits; Tony alternately doing a best-of Pete Steele's crowd-heckling Type O lines and ripping on the audience for cheering for rape over stuff like chainsaws, Star Wars, and H.P. Lovecraft. The headlining set and no "Tower Deflower" left room in the set for the full Rape Trilogy ("Chainsodomy" -> "Raped Till Death" -> "Violating The Dead"), though not, if I recall correctly, all exactly one after the other. Truth told, though, the Metal Thursday audience is not a bunch of deranged perverts (ok, that may be a little far, "not a bunch of actual real-life rapists" is more strictly accurate), and the best crowd response was probably for "Pathogenic Bacteria", mostly because it came out fucking immense in this performance. As has been noted before, Scaphism is nothing if not consistent, and that consistency in producing high-level performances is going to get them noticed further afied sooner or later...and if they keep getting occasional out-of-region deathfest slots, it'll come sooner.


The bands having finished up, I headed out; I was technically on call and worn down from an early start to the day, but managed to get back home in one piece, and finish this shortly before heading out to see Fires of Old. Life rolls on, and sooner or later I will get better at documenting the relevant parts faster.

Panzerbastard with Ashers and Intheshit [O'Brien's, Allston, 12/22/2011]

I'd been ground down from the trip and subsequent re-integration into work to go out to the Worcester iteration of this non-release release show, but with another week gone by and whatever I was too sick from at the weekend to do much of anything cleared, it was in to Boston for this go-round. My timing was a little off, partly from ring rust and partly from the slightly earlier start -- Born of Fire shows are usually two-band with little chance of music before ten, but there was a third band on this date -- but that of course didn't matter much, with beer, Dead Snow, and good company whiling the time down until Intheshit was ready to blast through their set.

Intheshit [5.5/7]
Of course, the band promptly flipped that assumption by playing a more extended, varied, and meaty set still built around, though no longer solely composed of, fast, blasting grindcore. Intheshit's no longer a stopwatch grind band, where the set is a battle between the length of the available material and the band members' stamina and ability to execute, and the slower and occasionally doomier parts do well to set up the straight-ahead violence. When called upon, like at the end of the set, they can still do up three songs in two minutes, but their performance is no longer solely predicated on doing that. I don't see this band as often as I'm able to, but with this kind of development, and the promise of more in the future, that's definitely something I need to get fixed.

Ashers [5/7|NA]
I'm not sure that I can properly rate hardcore; if you go to more hardcore shows than metal gigs and don't trust a guy with Ensiferum and Tourniquet patches on his rig to properly understand a band like this, feel free to toss out the arbitrary number. That aside, this was a good, enjoyable set of punk-flavored hxc with some rockier elements; not quite up my alley, but a good change of pace, a good performance, and a necessary complement to the other opener given the headliners and how this gig was inevitably going to draw. I may not go out to see them on my own hook, or encounter them too often since I don't see many pure hardcore or punk shows, but they'll be worth the watch next time I encounter them on a more metal/grind/Bobfest bill.

Worth mentioning in here is that O'Brien's was full up nearly to capacity, despite being a Thursday night so close to the holidays. You'd expect this, having a release show with good support for a killer, well-liked band who draw from both metalheads and punks, but it's also always good to see expectations being met. The only expectation that wasn't met was that Panzerbastard would actually have material available for sale, this being a release show, but pressers, what are you gonna do? They'll eventually have the record available, and we, oh horrors, will just have to go see Panzerbastard again to pick it up. Somehow, Boston will deal.

Panzerbastard [6/7]
Lack of new recordings aside, PB completely killed it, pretty much as expected. The Motorhead-cribbing-Hellhammer ethos remains intact, rolling forward in a spiky ball of tarry sludge with rusting metal spikes sticking out of it, the new stuff that people didn't all immediately know how to yell along to blending right in with the older stuff that they did. It felt a little short at the end, but this is probably due more to me losing track of time than anything else; this was a thoroughly crushing set that covered most everything you could expect from the band. Keith may have chopped off his hair, but he's lost none of his fire, as the aftermath below shows:


















Absolute fucking carnage. The only way.

After gawking at the carcass of Keith's bass as above, I beat feet for the bridge; it was only a little early, and I still had work and holiday crap to get through. This last hogged up most of the intervening week; this being out, though, I now get the chance to dare the Pike out to Scaphism.