Morgan Lander of revived nu metallers Kittie recently looked back at being “the lone woman in a sea of nu-metal dudes,” and it’s undeniable that something is and has been changing in metal over the last few decades, in terms of the scene becoming more open to all. It’s not that metal wasn’t always a global and diverse phenomenon; it’s that now it’s more and more normalized, and treated less like a gimmick or novelty, with embarrassing epithets like “female-fronted” becoming less common, while the “name three songs” t-shirt challenge is frequently mocked online, and rightly so. As metal studies scholar Dr. Keith Kahn-Harris stated at the online launch of the book Heavy Metal and Disability: Crips, Crowds, and Cacophonies, metal becoming a “space inclusive and open to care, open to changing itself” has been “one of the most exciting things” in his lifetime. Extreme metal, especially death metal, has seen in recent years plenty of challenges to its boys’ club status, from Pupil Slicer, Castrator, Entheos, and Employed to Serve, to Brazil’s Crypta, playing tonight’s sold-out show.
It’s a Friday night in Montreal, just on the cusp of fall, and a long summer coming to its close. The metalheads are gathered outside the Piranha Bar, a historic Montreal metal venue: a strange place, whose interior is incongruously dominated by slot machines. When you go to a show there it can be unclear where you are supposed to go, upstairs or down? Tonight, this show is in the basement, so you go past the slot machines, and downstairs Montreal quartet Burning Sanctum are already grinding away at their doom metal. Singer Ethan Desjardins is dressed like a medieval monk with corpse paint, so you know they mean business, and the band does not disappoint on the hokum front, and I mean that as a compliment.
In between songs, we are offered banter about dark arts and hanged men: “Do you seek truth, or do you seek power? If you seek both, the only way you can attain it is through the eternal acquisition of souls,” intones Desjardins before the band kicks into the song “Eternal Acquisition of Souls.” The music itself is muscular doom rock, with a nice thick and chunky guitar sound, and a trad edge to it; and though it doesn’t necessarily reach for the transcendental heights or dismal lows this genre can attain, it walks a satisfying middle path, and Desjardins has a great throat-shredding growl. The music is groove-heavy, with that Sabbathian stomp, and if I could pick one band to compare them to it would be Cathedral, for that touch of the absurd: what would doom metal be without it?
Granby, Quebec quintet Sarkasm, originally formed in the 1990s and reunited in the 2020s with two recent albums out, are seasoned thrashers, and quite a sight with singer Bruno Bernier and his white mane all dressed in white. They play to a local crowd, with banter in French, and their set definitely raises the energy level and demonstrates that thrash can still have plenty of thrills to offer, despite many of its big names being decidedly over the hill. Sarkasm still have that fire though, and their songs demonstrate a creative and confident spirit, with enough technical twists and turns to keep it interesting.
Bernier makes a joke about playing tracks from their “premières deux albums” before admitting they have “juste deux albums.” “Burn the Scarecrow” is a volley of energy and Bernier engages in some impressive crowd surfing. Sarkasm keep their set short and sweet, which is cool — something a lot of support bands should bear in mind.
Headliners Crypta are met with much fanfare, and there are clearly plenty of members of the Brazilian community here tonight, as evidenced by the Brazilian flag raised in the crowd. Their set starts off and the guitars are way too low in the mix — all you hear is drums. This improves a bit but generally their sound needs to be much louder. This doesn’t matter though, as the quartet proceed through a furious and compelling set of whirring metal on the border between death and black, of the kind that stoked so many creative fires in the ’90s. Singer-bassist Fernanda Lira (a classic formula, the bass-playing singer, conjuring up memories of Immortal and Morbid Angel alike, both of whom loom in Crypta’s music) is a commanding presence with all the right scowls and gurning, and her speaking to the crowd in French gets a big roar of appreciation. In addition to the music, Crypta are great on showmanship, with their hair flowing in the floor fans, and Lira playful and coquettish one moment, grim the next, with her tongue out — a true performer.
Winningly, Crypta look like they are having a fun time tonight, and good vibes abound all round. Musically, drummer Luana Dametto is the star of the show, driving the band’s nimble onslaught with energy and technicality. Observing the many women in the audience, including up at the front, and the enthusiastic reception with which tonight’s crowd welcomes Crypta, I am reminded of the time I saw The Agonist at BB Kings in NYC in 2007: a guy took it upon himself to stand in the front row with his back to Alissa White-Gluz for their whole set — an obvious and shameful show of misogyny, as if to say that due to her gender White-Gluz (who now fronts Arch Enemy, trailblazers in terms of centring a female death metal voice with Angela Gossow) did not belong onstage. It’s great to see how much has changed since then, even though there is plenty more work to do to make metal a more welcoming place for all.
“You still have some energy left for a fast song?” asks Lira before bursting into “Starvation,” while the slow riff in “Lord of Ruins” recalls Morbid Angel’s “God of Emptiness.” At the end, the quartet bow to a football chant of “Olé, olé olé olé,” and spend time greeting the crowd, capping a great night of extreme metal sounds.
Review – Daniel Lukes
Photos – Ryan Rumpel
