|
Dying
Fetus
As someone who
can take or leave death metal, I decided to give the opening two bands a
miss to make sure I actually lasted the full evening and instead, opted
to sample the delights of the nearby bars. Upon arriving at the venue I
soon remembered why I don’t attend more shows here (well, ones that
are likely to sell out, anyway). The place is tiny
and when it’s sold out it is uncomfortably cramped, exasperated by
the odd shape of the main room and rather bizarre decision to place a
bar pretty much directly to the right of the stage and double that up as
a cloakroom. Add all this to the horrendous quality and high price of
the watered-down sewage that passes for beer in here and what you have
is the potential for quite a letdown if the bands aren’t on form.
Luckily this
isn’t the case tonight and Dying Fetus proceed to slay the room with
45 minutes of some of the most brutal death metal you’ll ever hear.
Seriously, these lot are heavier than a herd of elephants and leave you
feeling like you’ve just had your brains kicked out of the back of
your head (in a good way, of course!).
Given that
UK shows outside of London are fairly rare for Dying Fetus, there’s a
large amount of anticipation for them and they do not disappoint – the
band are tight, the riffs are crushing, the drumming is lightning-fast
and Sean Beasley’s bass sweeps have to be seen to be truly
appreciated. Even if the vocals are a little generic (as is the case
with so many death metal bands), the musicianship is something to marvel
at and if the headliners weren’t the kings of the genre, then you
might be forgiven for thinking that Dying Fetus would steal the show
tonight.
Cannibal
Corpse
|
And
so to the headliners. As previously mentioned, Cannibal Corpse
are widely seen as being the leaders of the death metal genre
and have been for nearly two decades now and based on
tonight’s performance, it’s easy to see why. If the
anticipation for Dying Fetus was high then the atmosphere inside
the venue before Cannibal Corpse take the stage has reached
fever-pitch. After a short teaser supporting Children of Bodom
back in February, the band are finally back for their first full
UK tour in what seems like an age.
It’s
been quite a while since the band toured the UK to this extent
and it’s a great testament to the staying power of this band
that all of the shows
|
|
|
(including
this one) are sold-out or thereabouts and an even greater
testament to the popularity of a genre that is about as outside
of the mainstream as it’s possible to get (not to mention a
glorious middle-finger to the ‘recession’ and all the other
economic-downturn crap we’re all sick to death of hearing
about).
|
|
|
And
while the two younger bands on the bill and others like them are
helping to raise the popularity of extreme music in this
country, those who think Cannibal Corpse need
these bands to sell out shows in the UK (as was the view of
many people on internet forums in the lead up to this tour) were
proven very wrong tonight, as the vast majority of people are
here for the New York legends and from the moment they walk out
to what can only be described as a heroes’ welcome, they
absolutely slay the room and proceed to rip the heads off
everyone in the giant moshpit in front of them with an
old-fashioned, brutal death metal set that encompasses all
periods of the band’s history from debut album 'Eaten
Back to Life'
(‘A Skull Full of
|
|
Maggots’)
right up to their latest offering 'Evisceration
Plague'
from which, four songs are aired tonight.
While
many here who are undoubtedly seeing the band for the first time
tonight would be forgiven for only wanting to hear the old
favourites (for example such delightfully-titled ditties as ‘I
Cum Blood’, ‘Fucked With a Knife’ and set-closing duo
‘Hammer Smashed Face’ and ‘Stripped, Raped and
Strangled’, both of which nearly bring the building crumbling
to the ground) they applaud the new songs just as loudly and
what becomes obvious is that Cannibal Corpse are not a band who
after two decades are simply happy to just phone it in – they
are still putting out consistently good albums are far from
content to rest on their laurels when it comes to their live
shows.
|
|
The
band are on top-form tonight and whether it’s the crunching
riffs and screeching solos of Pat O’Brien and Rob Barrett, the
sweeping bass of Alex Webster or the pounding drumming of Paul
Mazurkiewicz, everyone plays their part to perfection and in
man-mountain singer George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher, they have
a genuinely intimidating frontman who at the same time, can have
the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand and hanging on his
every word; his guttural growls seemingly coming from the pits
of hell themselves.
Despite
the fact that the venue clearly has its problems, by the end of
the show, with sweat literally dripping off the walls and
ceiling and having just witnessed a lesson in brutality from the
|
|
|
masters,
you are left with the feeling that a Cannibal Corpse show was
destined to happen in such a dingy little club and that any
other way would just be unnatural.
|
Setlist:
‘Evisceration
Plague’, ‘Time to Kill Is Now’, ‘Disfigured’, ‘Death Walking
Terror’, ‘I Cum Blood’, ‘Fucked With A Knife’, ‘Sentenced To
Burn’, ‘Evidence In the Furnace’, ‘The Wretched Spawn’,
‘Scalding Hail’, ‘Make Them Suffer’, ‘Pit Of Zombies’,
‘Vomit the Soul’, ‘Priests of Sodom’, ‘Unleashing the
Bloodthirsty’, ‘A Skull Full of Maggots’. Encore:
‘Hammer Smashed Face’, ‘Stripped, Raped and Strangled’.
Review
by: Adam G.
|