Performing: Suffocation, Cephalic Carnage, Havok, Fallujah
Location: Ljubljana / Gala Hala / Slovenia
Date: Tuesday, 04.06.2013
The Boys Are Back In Town, Thin Lizzy sang back in 1976, and the legendary New York death metal giants brutally growled their way through that line on their third return to our capital. But it doesn’t matter how many times Suffocation come back, because the local death metal crowd always greets them with open arms and a big grin. After all, they’re not a band like Amon Amarth or Korpiklaani, whose “one gig too many” was already their first, heh. This time the New Yorkers returned with their new record Pinnacle of Bedlam, a new and much better-suited replacement for the missing Frank Mullen, and three support acts that promised a solid warm-up before the death metal titans.
The job of warming up the crowd on this tour went to a young American band that doesn’t wear turbans and doesn’t come from Iraq, yet still took the name Fallujah. By their own account, that’s because they grew up in a post-9/11 world, and the Iraqi city of Fallujah was the city that suffered the most destruction and the most human casualties, on both sides, during the second Gulf War. The Americans put out the EP –Nomadic- this April and played two thirds of it, with the rest of the set made up of tracks from their debut The Harvest Wombs. Before the show, the name Fallujah promised fairly solid things, but the band, who play atmospheric/technical death metal with strong modern and metalcore influences, only partly delivered. Mostly that was down to the awfully bad sound, which made it impossible to pick out all the complex nuances of the guitar and bass duo. What floated to the surface were only the “keyboardy” atmospheric leads, which mostly sounded like a poor copy of Cynic, and the result of the muddy roaring of the monotonous vocals and the rest of the instruments was one big chaotic mess. It’s nice that a band from San Francisco isn’t just another one of the many thrash metal bands from that area, but they’ll need to do a lot more before Fallujah leave even half the mark that some of their fellow townsmen have.
And thrash metal is exactly what the next band on stage plays, greeting the Slovenian crowd once again. Havok from Denver left a puddle of blood at the same scene of the crime last May (on 21.5.2012 they tore it up with Goatwhore and 3 Inches of Blood), and this time they stopped by Ljubljana right before the release of their new record Unnatural Selection, which comes out at the end of the month. A lot was expected of Havok, and the American thrash maniacs had no trouble living up to their name as one of the better modern thrash metal bands. The crowd was a surprise too, following the guys, led by roaring vocalist/guitarist David Sanchez, eagerly and faithfully from the very first notes. So why are Havok some of the best that modern thrash has to offer? Because, much like Warbringer, they stand out with unbridled energy, rawness, aggression and speed, plus tight technical execution and an excellent live presence. In their good half hour they lunged at us like a hungry shark at an unsuspecting swimmer and gnawed us down to the bone with wreckers like D.O.A., Covering Fire and Scumbag in Disguise. And it wasn’t only the crowd going nuts, since the Americans were just as energetic and wild; there were no shortage of snapped strings or microphones flying through the air! The excellent sound, which pushed both the riff meat grinder and the pretty original solos (accompanied by guitarist Reece’s crazy grimaces) as well as the thundering rhythm section (the insane drumming especially stood out!) to the front, was the cherry on top of a gig that probably even topped the first one.
From the black, thrashy sheep of the evening, we went with Havok’s fellow Americans Cephalic Carnage back down the paths of more brutal death/grind metal. The walls of Gala Hala hadn’t heard such a technical musical mindfuck since the Americans’ last appearance, which the guys call hydrogrind, a term for a blend of death metal, grindcore and eternal love songs about marijuana. As the eternal third act on the bill (this time Cephalic played Gala Hala for the third time, yep, third in a row), they rattled the crowd’s earwax with a potent mix of death metal and grind, topped off with jazzy structures, constantly shifting rhythms and tempos, technical, atonal and dissonant guitar lines, and animalistic drumming, with the extraordinary six-string bassist Nick Schendzielos adding his own bit. Cephalic Carnage add a touch of sludge and doom to their already diverse, wildly varied music and the cup is full. But not for Cephalic Carnage, because they also attack with dual vocals, traded back and forth between Nick and head cookie monster Lenzig Leal, without a doubt one of the best and funniest frontmen in extreme metal. He urged us more than once to smoke weed or “the herb” (to which they obligatorily dedicated the love song Kill For Weed), entertained with flamenco interludes and all sorts of polished banter. Cephalic Carnage delivered a smoked-out run through their catalog of six studio albums, and for extra enjoyment they finished by cracking us up with a crazy black metal parody, Black Metal Sabbath, during which they put on corpse paint masks, studs and spikes, while Nick wore an apocalyptically neighing horse mask, ponytail included. If you ever walk into a room with five guys who are stoned out of their minds, rolling their umpteenth joint to a soundtrack of psychopathic music, then you know you can only be in the company of Cephalic Carnage. “Squeal piggy!”
And then, finally, the long-awaited peak with death metal giants Suffocation. It doesn’t matter that the legendary New Yorkers stop by here on practically every tour; every single time we await this mighty band like a kid waiting for a scoop of ice cream. Because we know they’ll give it their all every time and play a death metal show the way it’s meant to be played. Sadly, this time too Suffocation performed without legendary frontman Frank “The Tank” Mullen, whose shoes were filled by another (vocally) brutal guy, John Gallagher (Dying Fetus). The choice might have looked questionable at first, because Gallagher’s stage presence was an unknown. With Dying Fetus he has none, since he just stands rooted in front of the mic the whole time. I was afraid he’d just stay behind the mic stand with Suffocation too, but I was happily wrong. Gallagher moved around like a madman on speed, kept the show flowing with solid banter, and above all delivered a fantastic vocal performance that was every bit as brutal, aggressive and convincing as Frank’s. The rest of the band was never in question anyway. Terrance Hobbs and Guy Marchais once again convinced with their technically superior playing, dishing out head-chopping riffs, and returning drummer Dave Culross excelled too. It’s probably thanks to him that we got two tracks from the EP Despise the Sun, which he played on, and broke our necks to the eternal death metal anthems Catatonia and Funeral Inception. Bassist Derek “bobblehead” Boyer was missing in action, a bit strangely and unfamiliarly, due to a neck injury, and his headbanging is otherwise the textbook example of the craft, but he still laid down the bass the way only he can. Gallagher approached the rest of the played material with a great deal of respect too, and the tornadoes from the current record Pinnacle of Bedlam worked excellently, but above all he proved to be a hundred times better choice than clumsy Bill Robinson (Decrepit Birth), who performed with Suffocation on their last visit to Ljubljana. The crowd’s reaction matched, with spontaneous moshing and probably a record-breaking amount of stage diving, which even the fairer sex wasn’t shy about! Suffocation prove again and again that they are and remain an unstoppable death metal force, firmly planted on death metal’s bloody throne!
author: Rok Klemše
photos: Nina Grad
FALLUJAH:
1. Alpha Incipient
2. Venom Upon the Blade
3. Become One
4. Cerebral Hybridization
5. Assemblage od Wolves
HAVOK:
1. Covering Fire
2. Point of No Return
3. Scumbag in Disguise
4. Unnatural Selection
5. D.O.A.
6. Time Is Up
CEPHALIC CARNAGE:
1. Raped By An Orb
2. Divination & Volition
3. P.G.A.D.
4. Endless Cycle of Violence
5. Warith
6. Warbots A.M.
7. Kill For Weed
8. Lucid Interval
9. Black Metal Sabbath
SUFFOCATION:
1. Thrones of Blood
2. As Grace Descends
3. Catatonia
4. Funeral Inception
5. Rapture of Revocation
6. Liege of Inveracity
7. Pierced From Within
8. Purgatorial Punishment
9. Mass Obliteration
10. My Demise
11. Infecting the Crypts
