Location: Graz / Explosiv / Austria
Date: March 24, 2018
Three weeks after we caught a show by the great Sepultura, who are going through an artistic reawakening in these new times, another reason to head back to Graz’s Explosiv came along: Venom Inc., Suffocation, Nervosa, Aeternam and Survive. Five bands, five very different musical stories. Pretty tempting, no?
Who’d have thought you could one day hear, on the same stage on the same night, a band considered pioneers of the N.W.O.B.H.M. boom alongside one that broke new ground for technical death metal? A wildly fitting and fascinating combo. Still, most of the crowd that showed up for the spectacle belonged to the generation of metal fans in their thirties and a bit beyond. In other words, tastes leaning toward the extreme side of metal, which here means death metal!
First on stage, around 7:30 p.m., were the Japanese band Survive. The quartet hones a blend of death metal with thrash elements, with vocals handled by singer and guitarist Nemo and bassist Sinjilow, and the lineup rounded out by guitarist Gaku and drummer Shintarou. The Japanese, active since 1998, a solid twenty years, still show tremendous commitment on stage after two decades, with sharp focus and total dedication to everything they do. They play with a lot of drive and passion. Survive got pretty decent sound conditions and delivered an optimal, well-rehearsed and tight set that ran just a good half hour. The band isn’t bringing anything new or unheard-of, and at times the songs edge toward metalcore tunes, but there’s no shortage of clear melodic passages either. A technically very well-equipped group. The band warmed up the crowd superbly in the opener, with four more acts still to come. “Human Misery” is already the group’s sixth album and the current one, the band gave it plenty of promotion with their “Dean” guitars, a polished sound, a very tight foursome that can build up serious speed. Maybe it’s precisely this fashionable aesthetic that at times seems to be inspired by metalcore of the Trivium kind. Anyway, for this show Survive were helped out by drummer Antoine Guerrin, whom the Canadians Aeternam lent them.
Aeternam it was, then. Canadians, a band formed almost ten years after Survive. They’ve got three studio albums under their belt, the latest, “Ruins Of Empires”, out last year. Aeternam are a fun gig-night curveball too, especially when you go in on a “expect the unexpected” basis. Their stylistic starting point is death metal, but with a hefty dose of pomp and bombast. The band strongly weaves in passages built from Oriental motifs, and even works the sound of traditional Moroccan instruments into the arrangements, which gives them a “folk” flavor too. The highly likable growl of frontman Achraf Loudiy, who also handles rhythm guitar, is occasionally mixed with clean vocals. Bassist Maxime Boucher gave him some backing vocal support now and then. Babylonians, Mesopotamia and Egypt came alive. No surprise, since Achraf is Moroccan by origin and the band’s main songwriter, so it’s clear where such ideas come from. Aeternam also don’t hold back from sprinkling in the occasional blast-beat volley that riddles individual passages. Backing tracks of orchestrations accompanied an otherwise highly atmospheric, fiery show. The band served up a mixed selection of material from all three albums, so we got Damascus Gate, The Coronation of Seth, Praetor of Mercury, Sun Shield, Fallen Is the Simulacrum of Bel, Hubal, Profaner Of Light, Paropamisadae, Goddess of Masr and Angel Horned. Aeternam sound a bit different, even though quite a few of their peers are attempting similar approaches. Live, though, they’re a good match for bands like Orphaned Land and Melechesh.
Nervosa are three razor-sharp Brazilian women from São Paulo, with three albums to their name. We first met the band in 2015, when the girls played Metaldays in Tolmin. Even then they won us over with an extremely confident, charismatic show, brimming with seething energy and fire. This time was no different. In fact, it was even better. The band is more mature and comes across even more convincing on stage. Sure, musically they’re not discovering Einstein’s theory of relativity, but for an all-female band, an all-female collective, they’re definitely above average. They deliver a version of razor-sharp, uncompromisingly destructive thrash metal revival (you can feel the Teutonic school influences) that knows no breaks and no rest. Energetic singer and bassist Fernanda Lira ran back and forth across her half of the stage the whole time, fired off a whole host of grimaces, stuck her tongue out left and right without restraint, and shot some looks at the crowd that were dead serious and angry. The trio clicks together superbly. They showed off a huge amount of tightness and coordination, and next to the main stage magnet, singer Fernanda, who hissed wildly through her furious vocal performance, guitarist and backing vocalist Prika Amaral provided solid support, while Nervosa could never have been this convincing without the furious Luana Dametto keeping watch behind the drums. The band already played some material from the upcoming new studio album “Downfall of Mankind”, due this June. The brutal girls spewed out salvos of rage and menace! An excellent show in every respect.
And then came the set by the band that drew the most attention of the night, the American legends of technical death metal pioneering Suffocation. A good three hundred people crammed in. Properly hardened and jagged ones, at that. The temperature was also raised by some fans of heavy sounds who made the trip from neighboring Croatia, and there were a few “lost and forgotten” Slovenes too (since we always travel separately to gigs abroad) from the Styria region. The band delivered another top-notch performance, going all in and firing with all available artillery from every position. Considering that Frank Mullen, the band’s lead throat, announced a few days ago that he’s leaving Suffocation for good because of work commitments, in other words indefinitely, the question now is whether the band will install as his replacement the guy who’s been their occasional live stand-in, now entering his fourth year in that role with Suffocation. That’s drummer Ricky Myers of Disgorge, who once again delivered an exemplary show with his piercing growl, worthy of filling Mullen’s boots. The band holds up remarkably well despite a good bundle of lineup upheavals lately. That was confirmed again by the superb drumming skills and performance of newcomer Eric Morotti, who joined two years ago as a replacement for the exceptional and in many ways irreplaceable skins virtuoso Mike Smith. Continuing in that vein, there’s another fairly fresh member in the crew. That’s Charles Errigo, who initially also served as a temporary replacement for the overbooked Guy Marchais, but was recently added to the regular lineup. So alongside the only original member, Terrence Hobbs, who of course has lived through all the bad and good times with Suffocation, there’s bassist Derek Boyer, who’s been rubbing the bass guitar for Suffocation since 2004. Last June the band released its eighth studio album in total, “…Of the Dark Light”, and played two songs from it, Return to the Abyss and Clarity Through Deprivation, which together with the not much older Pinnacle of Bedlam from the previous album successfully maintain the high-quality reputation and notoriety the band earned over the years thanks to the breadth of its extreme, technically complex, brutal songwriting, and which it still enjoys among its fans well into its mature years.
The band couldn’t disappoint. The setlist alone ruled that out. They stocked the repertoire generously with material from their early era, firing off three classics from the debut “Effigy Of the Forgotten” (Liege of Inveracity, the title track and Infecting the Crypts), adding two tracks from the album “Pierced from Within” (the title track and Thrones of Blood) and throwing in two more songs from the EP “Despiced the Sun” (Catatonia, Funeral Inception). Madhouse. Hobbs is still incredible when he lets loose and the energy grabs him completely and drags him into his own world on stage. With the calm yet hair-splittingly precise Errigo, the two clicked more than superbly. Boyer once again played bass his way, standing the instrument upright on the floor and almost leaning on it, plucking his way through the whole show in his own style. The drumming was utterly destructive and remains one of the most interesting elements of this cult band’s identity. It’s precisely this rhythmic looseness within the otherwise devastating energy of the compositions and structures that remains one of the main attractions of this veteran Florida death metal stronghold, which delivered a proper reckoning with all the quasi-morality of the new era that we’re enslaved to. Merciless and utterly “stretching”! Wrapped in abysses of evil and doom from which there’s no return. The apocalypse is here. The band reaped extreme ovations from a satisfied (but not fully satisfied) “suffocated” crowd, but didn’t return for an encore, even though the tour was supposed to be co-headlining with Venom Inc. They played exactly one hour of material and left the venue after their stellar show, with a starving crowd demanding more.
The final act of the night confirmed the predictions. A decent chunk of the crowd didn’t come back into the hall when three great veterans of their craft took the stage. Tony Dolan, Mantas and Abaddon. With a small correction. The latter had to skip this tour because of family obligations, and Jeramie Kling of The Absence filled in on drums. That they’re not Venom Inc. just another version of Venom (the band under the original name is led by their (quite literally) former comrade Cronos), driven only by the urge to cash in on live shows, is proven by the release of the new studio album “Ave”. It was well represented in the set. Between the opening new Ave Satanas and the no less new Metal We Bleed, the first classic, Welcome To Hell, was caught in the early part. Toward the end the band included War from the newer material and the Motörhead-style Black’n’Roll, and otherwise rolled out one classic after another.
No need to say the band possesses a timeless rock energy, which clearly rubbed off on all the true musicians of the first metal generation when they entered the process of pioneering the creation of something that later became metal in music, and which has flowed through these musicians’ veins all those years of defiance on the scene. Regardless of the fact that Venom’s discography is often used to mark the start of something that later developed into a new genre (black metal), that’s solely thanks to the album of that name, as well as Cronos’s guttural bellowing, which in Venom Inc. is so successfully embodied, if not outright upgraded, by the insatiable madman Tony Dolan. With the mic on the stand pointed downward and a stance full of grimacing, The Demolition Man is in many ways reminiscent of Motörhead’s energetic pose. Dressed in an “old school metal outfit”! The sound itself, which is entirely elementary and ruled by the energy of blasphemous rock’n’roll “proto-mission”, with unbridled contrasts of guitar, bass and drums, feels totally primal and instantly spellbinding. The band rolled out track after track. Mantas has become a very accomplished guitarist, and his often naive “pranks”, which show up especially on the studio albums of Venom’s first era, have long since become ancient history.
Dolan talked to the crowd far less this time than he usually does, for example at the band’s show at last year’s Metaldays festival, where they came back for as many as three encores. He obviously wasn’t motivated enough, since fewer and fewer people were watching the show toward the end. With that we were deprived of a pile of fun black humor that Dolan so deftly sprays out during gigs. He dedicated the song Parasite, for instance, to Abaddon, who had split with his partner, though it was more than obvious that the “parasite” label wasn’t aimed at Abaddon. Dolan did run into an unpleasant incident, though. All evening long there was a man in a wheelchair in the hall, in the crowd, who diligently followed every single show. Apparently he diligently followed the beer supplies at the bar too. By the time Venom Inc. came on, his mind and body were so heavily stocked with excess alcohol derivatives that from below the stage he kept yelling at Dolan: “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you…!!!”, which at one point got Dolan so worked up that he even hurled the mic stand to the floor. The initially irritated musician then spoke to the crowd quite calmly, saying it’s very sad that some people can still find the time to hate each other. The band professionally played the whole repertoire and then came back for the encore rather coldly and routinely. Venom Inc. can deliver more. But the Graz crowd didn’t even deserve it this time. Mantas and Dolan quickly left the stage after the show, only Kling stopped at the front of the stage and shook hands with fans. A shame about that provocation, but that’s how it goes. All I know is that Venom Inc. are a must-see again next time. At the first real opportunity. Goosebumps are never missing during their shows, they’re that real in everything they do.
The closing part belonged to the classics from the “Black Metal” album: Countless Bathory, Black Metal, Leave Me In Hell, Don’t Burn the Witch. The band wrapped up the encore with the cult Sons of Satan and Witching Hour (from the debut “Welcome To Hell”). There were also the lost classics Warhead and Lay Lust. The inclusion of the aforementioned Parasite (“Prime Evil”, 1989) was a joy too, from one of the three albums on which Tony Dolan played bass and sang for Venom in place of Cronos. All in all: the pact with the devil lives on, unblemished. Let’s hope the Venom Inc. crew shows up in Slovenia again soon, where, fingers crossed, they’ll get a nicer reception on stage than in Graz. It would be interesting to ask Dolan, over a pint or two of beer, what he honestly thinks of concertgoers like, for example, that “Wheels of Steel” fanatic mentioned above.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
SUFFOCATION:
1. Thrones of Blood
2. Return to the Abyss
3. Effigy of the Forgotten
4. Funeral Inception
5. Abomination Reborn
6. Clarity Through Deprivation
7. Pierced from Within
8. As Grace Descends
9. Entrails of You
9. Liege of Inveracity
10. Catatonia
11. Infecting the Crypts
VENOM INC.:
1. Ave Satanas
2. Welcome to Hell
3. Metal We Bleed
4. Die Hard
5. Live Like an Angel (Die Like a Devil)
6. Parasite
7. Warhead
8. Don’t Burn the Witch
9. War
10. Lady Lust
11. Leave Me in Hell
12. Black n’ Roll
13. Black Metal
14. Countess Bathory
—encore—
15. Sons of Satan
16. Witching Hour
