Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Gala hala, Ljubljana
Concert date: 22.03.2010
Attendance: 0
Dirty Skunks have once again cooked up a packed spring of gigs, and this time they brought none other than death metal royalty Suffocation to Ljubljana! The band last visited us three years ago, and now they’re back at the scene of the crime in Gala hala, this time on the Legacy of Blood tour, in honor of last year’s record Blood Oath. Keeping them company was a hefty lineup of bands: Burning the Masses, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Nervecell and Annotations of an Autopsy.
First on stage were young Californian deathcore crew Burning the Masses, who dropped their debut, Mind Control, two years ago. These days, in a genre of sung-out, watered-down and more than once chewed-over deathcore where most bands look as alike as two peas in a pod, it’s really hard to come up with anything new or even sound halfway distinctive. Well, Burning the Masses showed Gala hala, which despite the early hour was slowly but surely filling up, that they do have a few ideas of their own. Ears and eyes were glued, especially and for most of the set, to guitarists Chris Valenzuela and Arde Ostowari, who run their fingers up and down their fretboards unusually well and fast for the genre. The spectacular solos of Burning the Masses come close, technically, to something like The Faceless, for example. Unfortunately, though, they’re too quickly and too often dragged back into deathcore mediocrity by worn-out breakdowns, an average rhythm section and vocalist Cameron “Big Chocolate” Argon, who sounds like the singer of any “xy” deathcore band and has a nickname that’s best suited to a porn star. The big chocolate bar is indeed a brutal vocal beast, but his growling and screaming sounds as generic as it gets. Burning the Masses did their job as the opening act solidly and confidently, but also forgettably.
The show moved up to a higher level of quality with Italy’s Fleshgod Apocalypse, who turned heads last year with their excellent debut Oracle, released on Candlelight. In a good half hour the Italians got the chance to present a few tracks off the debut and the eagerly awaited EP Mafia. And if we usually make fun of Italian bands, with Fleshgod Apocalypse all we can do is smile at some hellishly good technical death metal with a touch more brutality and melody to boot. Lead vocalist Tommaso Riccardi even shows off decent English, which for an Italian is more the exception than the rule. The guys served up a crushing mix of technical death metal backed by dynamic, tectonic drumming and breathtaking soloing, along with moments of fat groove, all seasoned with a pinch of melody. The tracks from the debut sounded great, like Requime and SJ Minore, Thru Our Scars proved that Mafia promises no less than Oracle, and Fleshgod Apocalypse pulled off a nice surprise with a perfectly played At the Gates classic, Blinded by Fear.
The tension before the mighty Suffocation was successfully cranked up by Dubai thrash/death metallers Nervecell. We got a chance to see them on Metalcamp’s second stage a while back, but this time they played here for the first time in a club setting and successfully served us the death/thrash wrecking balls from their debut Preaching Venom. What a fitting title! Nervecell spat out toxic thrash anthems straight from the stage, full of great riffs and twisty, dynamic turns, while the energetic and confident frontman/bassist Rajeh Khazaal took care of Nervecell’s death side with a brutal, aggressive voice and showed us how to preach venom! Drummer Louis Rando rattled our bones good, nailing the varied transitions and the devastating double bass assaults that David Haley (Psycroptic) handled on the album, and he did it superbly and with total confidence. Nervecell played the tracks off the album in a truly crushing, confident and uncompromising way, and they earned an even bigger plus with a great rendition of the Bolt Thrower anthem Where Next to Conquer.
If the tension before Suffocation had been building seriously up to this point, and so had the quality of the bands, it also took a serious dive with the arrival of English quintet Annotations of an Autopsy. The guys played boring deathcore full of soul-crushing breakdowns, monotonous guitar lines and a dreary rhythm section, while vocalist “Sewer mouth” Steve Regan showed off yet another in a long line of completely identical deathcore growls. Those forty-odd minutes of AoaA were really hard to endure, even though the sewer-mouthed Steve tried his best to come across as likable by calling for everybody to drink beer together. Their set killed our appetite even for beer.
And then, finally, the long-awaited moment arrived! After three years, the New York death metal giants Suffocation, from Long Island, triumphantly returned to the stage of Gala hala. No formalities, they cut us down straight away with the opener from the cult debut Effigy of the Forgotten, Liege of Inveracity. In the first seconds of the show Suffocation flung open the gates of hell and cranked the heat in Gala hala up by a good few dozen degrees. The crowd started behaving like a pack of demons hungry for sex, beer and some good blasphemous death metal, and the moshing didn’t stop for a second, limbs flew everywhere, and the guys on stage were quickly joined by stage divers. And Suffocation just kept going without mercy: the phenomenal guitar duo of Terrance Hobbs and Guy Marchais with masterful, hellish riffs and demonic solos, Derek Boyer showing how death metal bass is done, and the fantastic Mike Smith with breath-stealing drumming that shook the foundations of Gala hala and the bones of the crowd (even though he’s shaved off his dreads and with that headband looked like an NBA basketball player). And of course, last but not least, the legendary Frank “the Tank” Mullen, one of the craziest frontmen around and an uncompromising growler who sounds as good live as he did on the debut almost twenty years ago! When Frank sticks out his tongue and raises his arm in that signature, unforgettable chopping motion, hands shoot up in the crowd too, following crazy Frank. It’s unbelievable that Suffocation have been terrorizing stages for 20 years and are still this damn good, full of energy, giving everything on stage and putting on a show you won’t forget anytime soon. Just like you won’t forget the classic death metal hymns Suffocation play: the cult Effigy of the Forgotten, Pierced From Within, Suspended in Tribulation! Insane! And when Frank, in the best stage banter of all time, introduces a song by saying you have to love your bastard child even if he’s a serial killer, the only thing that can come next is Breeding the Spawn. And when Frank the Tank tells you that sometimes you love a too-beautiful woman so much that all you want is to wrap yourself up in her innards, Suffocation roll right over you with the legendary romantic confession Entrails of You. The record released last year, Blood Oath, was naturally the centerpiece of the show, and rightly so, since the songs Blood Oath, Cataclysmic Purification and Come Hell or High Priest hit just as hard live as the old classics, and are ample proof that the power of Suffocation hasn’t weakened one bit after 20 years. Sadly, all good things come to an end, and so we had to say goodbye to Suffocation too, with the excellent Bind, Torture, Kill! With this show Suffocation only cemented the fact that they’re one of the best death metal bands in the world, and once you swear a blood oath to them, it lasts until you’re rotting six feet under and pushing up daisies!
Photos: Martin Prezelj
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