Featuring Necrophagist,
with Decapitated, Cephalic Carnage, Cattle
Decapitation,
The Faceless, Ion
Dissonance, and Beneath the Massacre.
Review by S J
"Bonehand" Holetz
This week, in an
altogether
rare move for me on a school
night, I set forth braving traffic,
heat and
my own exhaustion to join a sellout crowd to for the
2007 Summer
Slaughter Tour at Seattle’s Studio
Seven. Billed as the “Most Extreme Tour of
the Year”, I was looking forward to sampling this full
nine-course buffet
of state-of-the-art
Extreme Metal, topped off by headliners Necrophagist.
With Nile
hitting the
road in a few weeks, the claim of “Most Extreme…” is
arguable, but as
given the
sheer
breadth of bands on display, it seemed to me there would
truly be no
better forthcoming
showcase for
me to appraise what’s happening currently in the world
of metal.
Unfortunately,
as the anticipation for
this tour was mounting, some bad news was announced. Two
of the acts set to play, As Blood
Runs
Black and Arsis, were forced to cancel.
While this was disappointing news, there was still more
than
enough music on tap to satisfy the discerning metal
fan's fevered brain.
The first act to hit the
stage was
debut Mechanics of
Dysfunction, I’ve been looking forward to
checking out their
live effort.
Despite being
hampered by a rough guitar sound, the band powered
through it and
did not disappoint. Their music
reminds me of nothing more than a punch-drunk
prizefighter, staggering around the ring
in a seemingly
incoherent fashion before
bludgeoning the shit out of an unwitting opponent with
unyielding
purpose.
Beneath
The Massacre's set was coolly brutal, but way too
short. As a bonus though, I
finally had a
chance to pick up their CD, which has been out of stock
everywhere I’ve
looked lately.
I
was somewhat
less familiar
with second act Ion
Dissonance, who also hail from Montreal.
Although
I have had a chance to hear their first two albums, for
whatever reason
their
music
has failed to grab me. They did turn in a respectably
solid set though,
and
I thought that drummer
JF Richard really stood out. He was really going for it,
a
very nice performance on his part.
Between sets, I
had the
opportunity to spend a few minutes talking metal with
Jorge, guitarist
for
Seattle
meeting the rest of the band at the show. I
hope to spend my hard-earned
money on a debut CD from
this band at some point in the not too distant
future.
Next
up was the
band I had
been anticipating most this evening,
their debut
CD Akeldama in
April and it
has been circling my brainpan in heavy rotation ever
since.
Their music displays an exceedingly cool combination of
the highly
technical and the melodic, notable
even amongst such incredibly creative peers.
The loss of their bassist to a funeral for the evening
did
result in a thinner overall sound, but the band was
still able to more
than match their recorded
efforts
live, playing tight as can be through stop-on-a-dime
time
changes. Too bad they were only able to
play four songs, but fortunately, two
of them were most excellent favorites “Pestilence” and
“Ghost of a Stranger.” I
love this band, and can’t wait to hear more from them.
my lone listen to their most recent release Karma Bloody Karma,
but HOLY SHIT! This band absolutely
tears it up live! CD
kicked
seven kinds of
ass during their half hour set, the band laying down a
brutal
thunder while
frontman Travis Ryan screeched like a madman above it
all. This guy
has an insane vocal
range, hitting everything from a low growl to a primal
screech
that’ll
raise the hairs on your neck. I was
seriously impressed with their set, which raised
the level of the show perfectly for the bludgeoning to
follow.
Cattle Decapitation.
photo
by S J Holetz, 2007
That bludgeoning would come
at the hands of Cephalic
Carnage,
who arguably bested the headliners
for top performance of the evening. Frankly,
I almost feel a little unqualified to review Cephalic,
as the
hyper technicality and creativity of their music
occasionally
leaves me feeling like I’m in over my head.
That said, I really dug the alien-tinged
human decay vibe of their latest release Xenosapien, and was
thrilled to
have the opportunity to check out their live offering.
The band took the stage with
a forebodingly atmospheric wave of synths before tearing
into the
audience
like a grizzly bear on acid. Guitarist Zac Joe proceeded
to fire
jaggedly
precise riffs over the audience
while whirling like a dervish, as drummer John
Merryman dazzled with an adept display of percussive
creativity. Meanwhile, Vocalist
Lenzig Leal did a masterful job of working the
jam-packed crowd into
an
insane moshing frenzy. The band was in awesome form, and
their set
alone was
worth
the price of admission.
Cephalic Carnage.
photo
by S J Holetz, 2007
The penultimate slot of the
evening was taken by Polish death metal merchants Decapitated,
who were
new to
me. They definitely could assume a monster groove,
laying down more
than a few
solid headbanging
breakdowns, but to my ears their unfortunate position,
following
the insane histrionics of
Cephalic
Carnage,
had the unintended result of reducing the bands output
to plain vanilla
in
comparison. The crowd seemed
to like them more than I did though, as they were
moshing up a
storm.
At long last the headliners,
Germany's Necrophagist
took the stage, hitting the audience with wave after
wave
of blistering guitar. The superb musicanship and
jaw-dropping
technicality displayed by this deservedly
acclaimed band was just as impressive in the live
setting as on their
recorded output. However, as the set
unfolded the audience seemed surprisingly subdued. I'm not sure if it was due
to the previous
five hours of
withering heat in
this
sweatbox of a club, or because anyone in the audience
who has ever even
touched a guitar
was struck dumb, mesmerized by
Muhammed’s
Suicmez’s spectacular fretwork. But that would change
mid-set,
when
drummer Marco Minnemann took over for an extended drum
solo, and put on
an
absolute fucking clinic.
This guy does more with two high-hats than a lot of
drummers do with an entire kit, and he rocked the place
with
the finest
display
of live drumming I have seen since Clutch hit town,
which is no mean
feat. That
solo seemed
to
breathe fire into the audience, who went absolutely
insane,
and exhorted the
band to close out the show in
scorching fashion, an excellent end to a great
evening of metal.
Necrophagist. photo
by S J
Holetz, 2007