Death metal is not exactly a genre that has the world’s admiration and respect, but which musical genre, I ask you, takes seriously the level of death, destruction, and genocide that characterizes our contemporary world? If you want a musical genre which unflinchingly does not turn away from the slaughter, a genre which will help you make sense of all the horror without losing your fucking mind sometimes, that genre is death metal. Fuck Radiohead! I am listening to death metal.
Florida quintet Tracheotomy do a great job at getting the juices going tonight. “I want to see your beautiful faces,” says singer Simon Mariante, who goes from screechy vocals (which make me think deathcore) to some satisfying gutturals and slams, all indicating the band has their finger on the pulse of contemporary death metal. The crowd is into it, chanting away, and it rocks, but Tracheotomy need to do more to distinguish themselves from the pack. This groove’n’shred template, essentially established by Pantera 30 years ago, can take a beating and is clearly still standing solid, but it’s a very crowded field. Tracheotomy’s last song, Mask of Sanity, provides a suitably rousing end to their set, and their rap outro music (which my Shazam does not catch) encounters a room that is really filling up at this point.
Watery solos, staccato chugs: it’s tech death time! Los Angeles’ The Zenith Passage’s cosmic sound is very clear, and the lead guitars are undeniably awesome, with a proggy approach that chops and changes, demonstrating an impressive command over their material, pinioned by very muscly drummer Max Sepulveda; it’s a bit Dream Theater, but they have fat grooves too, as evidenced by Tracheotomy’s Vendel Lipscei rocking out stageside as he packs up his bass. I sometimes confuse TZP a bit with First Fragment, please forgive me (both are great bands!). There’s a bit of Opeth in the chill bits, but slightly more cheese on the lead guitars; good cheese, mind you. Basically, TZP’s path to awesomeness is that they keep things quite minimalistic even within the context of their cosmic progressive technical death metal: a little restraint goes a long way, it would seem. Bald singer Derek Rydquist gives a shout out to Montreal as an “important city for metal and death metal,” and it’s true. TZP finish up with new song Fleshbound Reliquary, which features the kind of cool funky bits that elevate TZP. “Every time I said ‘thank you’ I meant to say ‘merci,’” concludes Rydquist, and in all seriousness, it’s good of US metal bands to remember to make the effort, even with jokes.
Fallujah have always stood out for their atypical name: a city in Iraq which appeared often in the news due to being bombed extensively by the USA during the Iraq War. Musically, the San Francisco band have a lot going on, most notably the extensive presence of clean vocals, which is always tricky in death metal and which sometimes risks watering down the intensity, especially if over-used, which I think is the case here: am I listening to death metal or radio rock? Unlike TZP, who stack each different segment after the next (including some clean vox), Fallujah take a maximalist approach, with everything seemingly firing on all cylinders at the same time; a lot of it is drenched in vocal melodies and a bit of an overwhelming experience, running toward the saccharine end. The alien vocals in The Obsidian Architect are undoubtedly cool, but then it dawns on me that there is no bassist onstage, and TZP didn’t have one either (and neither will Entheos). I’m not sure metal bands touring without a bassist and the bass tracks on tape is a good development at all.
Entheos drummer Navene Koperweis has suffered a fractured ankle, but is braving ahead to finish what is the band’s first headlining tour, which also marks Entheos celebrating ten years together as a band. After the techno intro (which this time my Shazam catches as Killbourne’s Double Bbl), the band appear, playing mainly in darkness with minimal lights. Singer Cheney Crabb is a commanding presence, frequently urging the crowd to “move this room” and “vibe with me.” You can sense two eras in their sound: the Dark Future material, colder and more mechanical and deliciously alien, and the newer stuff, on which they have begun to incorporate melodic vocals, like Empty on the Inside, perhaps seeking to capture some of Spiritbox’s thunder. In any case, the clean vocals mostly hit the spot and are well incorporated into the band’s sound, and Crabb asks the crowd to turn on their phone lights for slow song Return to Me, dedicated to a friend who died due to drug addiction. They end with Sinking Sun, an excellent and energetic set closer, with Crabb announcing that “it is time to leave this room” and giving a rousing speech that we have “one fucking life to live, make it count, that’s what the metal community is all about,” before finally welcoming Koperweis to the front, explaining his broken ankle and how he cannot be stopped.
Long live death metal, and here’s to another decade of Entheos!
Review – Daniel Lukes
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