Week XVII: Evisceration plague

This blog is meant to be played LOUD!!

How do I circumscribe order upon chaos? What word, what description can I use to encapsulate madness? The very act of committing it to a page creates organization where there was none, orderliness where entropy reigned. In fact, I think that's what I'll call my forthcoming imaginary tech-death metal album - No Order Where Entropy Reigns. Has a good ring to it. It sounds like a song that Archspire might play...

Best segue ever. This past Tuesday, I saw the Decibel Magazine Tour lay waste to the occupants of the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver. The aforementioned Archspire opened the show with an epileptic fit of jaw-dropping technical death metal. West coast metal, represent! The band recently signed with the auspicious French label Season of Mist, who will release their forthcoming full-length album. They executed their tunes with stunning precision and were such fun to watch. See their guitarist, Dean Lamb, play through "Rapid Elemental Dissolve" below. Sample lyrics: These things planted seeds inside of me nocturnally/Breeding an alliance to defeat the Ghosts of Silent Tongue. Esoteric!

I'd never seen a show at the Commodore, but I had high expectations. Most death metal performances I attend take place in dingy bars with inadequate PA systems and less capable sound engineers. Imagine my delight (expressed through headbanging, roaring, and raised fists) to hear every note, every snare hit, every screaming lead with clarity. A good start to an evening of muscle pain and permanent hearing damage.

Next up was Beyond Creation from Quebec, a band I hadn't been terribly excited about on record but that I was definitely interested in seeing live. They had some guitar feedback issues during their performance, but it was otherwise a visually and technically impressive feat of extremely heavy music. In doing a bit of research prior to the show, I discovered their drummer Philippe Boucher also plays for Quebecois metallists Chthe'ilist. I recommend listening to their demo on a moonless night in the middle of the forest. They walked off the stage to a resounding cheer of appreciation from the crowd.

Then came the heavyweights. The room was filling up - an amazing turnout for a Tuesday night - and the testosterone-fueled energy was spilling across the floor along with the beer and sweat. Long hair and beards and all-black t-shirts with illegible band logos splattered across gory imagery twisted and writhed in front of the stage. Bodies collided and drinks splashed. The mosh pit grew tremendously as Immolation took the stage. This was a night to hail the old guards of metal. Immolation have been playing together for 25 years and have released some all-time classic death metal albums. They still perform with passion and raging zeal for heavy music, and the crowd ate it up. "Do you want something faster?!" Yes, we did. Their 2010 record 'Majesty and Decay' remains high on the list of my favourite straight-ahead death metal albums.

Immolation started the fire, then Napalm Death blew everything up. I saw Napalm Death play Victoria last year, and I knew I was going to love it. But I was unprepared for what was about to happen. By this point the room was at full capacity and the fuse was lit and burning. I direct your attention to my introductory paragraph - here's where it really applies. I'm at a loss for how to convey the insanity that took place when they attacked the stage. Concert reviews are a challenge, and this is an instance where you really just had to be there. The experience was incredible.

Napalm Death are unparalleled. Hailing from Birmingham, England, they're one of the pioneering bands in grindcore, and they've been doing it for as long as I've been alive. By the wealth of their recording and touring experience, they've become absolute masters. Their performance grabs you by the throat with shocking violence and throttles you with unrelenting ferocity before dropping your defeated body on the floor. I had an inkling of what was coming based on my previous concert experience, but it was nothing like this.

The energy in the room could have launched a missile. The band blasted through their back catalogue, playing hit after hit after hit, and the crowd was loving every bone crushing second. I could feel them feeding off the audience response, cranking the intensity, and feeding it right back to us. Screams of NAPALM! NAPALM! NAPALM! shook the hall. I've seen a lot of metal concerts, but this might have been the best live performance I've witnessed in my life. Barney Greenway is without a doubt one of the all-time greatest frontmen in metal. The whole set I felt like I was being blasted in the face with a music cannon. Try to get some sense of what that was like by watching a few minutes of their set from Hellfest last year. Skip to the 10 minute mark for a quick taste. Absolute chaos.

And I barely had time to catch my breath before the splatter and gore started flying from the stage. Here's something I learned this week - human bodies are not designed to take in 5 extreme metal bands in one evening. Somehow, though, I willed my exhausted carcass to the front of the stage to bask in the blood-soaked aural massacre that is Cannibal Corpse.

My ears hurt and my neck and back hurt and my throat hurt, but I wouldn't have missed it for anything. I've seen Archspire and Napalm Death play before. Cannibal Corpse was among the last on my list of great heavy metal bands that I've yet to see live. I've been a massive fan for years. They're my absolute favourite death metal band on earth. And I stood 10 feet from their bassist, Alex Webster, and watched the madness unfold in all its gut-wrenching, eardrum-eviscerating glory.

To cap off the unholy triumvirate of old-school legends, Cannibal Corpse exploded with 25 years' worth of B-horror film inspiring brutality. Their members are pushing 50, but haven't slowed down or turned down. The opening bands were certainly technically impressive, but their songwriting can't hold a candle to Webster, guitarist Pat O'Brien, and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz. They manage to put mind-boggling precision and technicality into an unrelenting, vicious, headbanging groove. Song after song, the mosh pit sucked people in and spat them across the floor and the front of the stage. Fists pumped, hair flew, drunken masses of unwashed metalheads bellowed in appreciation. This is death metal at its absolute pinnacle.

I couldn't believe the band's stamina. They played for 90 minutes and it being a weeknight, most of the audience didn't stick it out. By about halfway through their set the crowd was noticeably smaller. Especially after the performance that Napalm Death put on, it was difficult to muster the same intensity in the crowd. The energy just wasn't quite at the same level. I barely made it back to the couch I was crashing on for the night. It was sheer force of will and inertia that kept my feet moving. And I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. Or a blast beat.

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