Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Vojenska pevnost Josefov, Jaromer, the Czech Republic
Concert date: August 11, 2012
Attendance: 22,000
All good things must come to an end, and so on Saturday the final day of this year’s Brutal Assault rolled around. We woke up to a foggy, chilly morning, since the night had soaked us a bit, but Saturday turned into a gorgeous sunny day. The weather took pity on us. It was just hot enough that the cold beer in your hand didn’t warm up too fast. With the morning clearing up so quickly, boozing in town hit the spot, and the last day of the festival, at least to my taste, had less of interest on offer than the previous days. That left time to blow the last of the Czech crowns and do some »binge & purge« drinking (if only the Czechs hadn’t poured water instead of beer this time, shame on them).
The beginning of the end was announced at three in the afternoon by modern progressive metalcore outfit Textures from the Netherlands. This time they picked the right songs and delivered a more neck-breaking selection from their discography. There was a lot more getting thrown around by staccato riffing than floating away on atmospheric passages, but despite the energetic performance and a charismatic vocalist, Textures still came off a bit pale. The pretty long songs felt a little too repetitive, the mighty riffs just as repetitive, and the rather generic »cookie monster« vocal didn’t help the experience either, since it got ruined by the dreadful clean, truly way-too-delicate and quasi-emotional in-between verses and choruses.
Later on, Icelandic cowboys Solstafir came off even more boring, proving that Icelanders really can’t make anything but depressive, ambient and wannabe-atmospheric music. Still, with the sun slowly setting, Solstafir did manage to conjure up a pretty fitting atmosphere of depressive Icelandic chill, mostly thanks to singing exclusively in Icelandic, except for the closing song Goddess of the Ages. Solstafir started out as a true-believer viking/black metal band, but today they sound like Sigur Ros on acid and distortion. Long songs (they opened with a nearly twelve-minute geyser eruption, Ljos i Stormi) and suffering, monotonous vocals made for a hypnotic experience that quickly started to lose intensity, and it was a yawn that dragged me back down to earth from the clouds.
Kylesa, on the other hand, hurled us into a whole other sphere. All of a sudden we found ourselves in the middle of the stuffy, muggy Florida swamps, on a trip that was a perfect soundtrack to Thompson’s Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas: »Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us, and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, and a voice was screaming!« Kylesa sank their teeth into the crowd’s neck with sludgy riffs, a triple vocal assault and occasional psychedelic freakouts: the perfect blend of stoner jamming, psychedelic rock, Black Sabbath-style doomy riffs and aggressive metal parts! The experience was deepened by scorching, sun-like guitars, the crashing of two drum kits (which sadly isn’t as good as it sounds, since they mostly play the same lines), the excellent mixing of varied vocals, bandleader Phillip Cope messing around with a theremin, and the sometimes siren-like hypnotic, sometimes brutal vocals of guitarist Laura Pleasants (on whom the male half of the audience also gave their eyes a proper rest). Together with Corrosion of Conformity and Crowbar, the holy sludge/stoner trinity of this year’s Brutal Assault! »No. We can’t stop here. This is bat country.«
To my great disappointment, German thrash metal veterans Sodom got lost in a Vietnamese jungle. They took the stage at an inhuman half past two in the morning (especially when a 700-kilometer drive home awaits you the next day). I only got to console myself a good hour later, when there wasn’t a trace left on the grounds (even better, not an ear either, heh) of the humppa metal of Finnish trolls Finntroll (sorry for that exceedingly witty phrase… I just can’t think of anything more intelligent to say about Finntroll). The gates of hell were thus opened by New York veterans of blasphemous death metal, Immolation. This legendary outfit from Yonkers has been around for a good two decades, forming the unholy trinity of New York death metal together with Incantation and Suffocation, and there isn’t a bad moment in their discography. Immolation are a top-notch live band too. This time only the sound let them down, which was way too weak, not distinct enough and too quiet for a band of this caliber. But that doesn’t mean anything else about this gig was off, quite the opposite! Ross Dolan proved once again that he’s a phenomenal frontman. His brutal roar makes you think he’s been gargling battery acid before shows for two decades, Steve Shalaty’s drumming cracked like the Eastern Front in 1942 (just listen to the hellish chorus of Swarm of Terror), and the godless guitar lines of death metal guitar god Robert »Bob« Vigna were as sinister as ever and full of unique touches only Bob can pull off. Immolation served up one song from every record (except Shadows in the Light) and also gave us a peek at their recently released EP Providence with the song What They Bring, which proves that Immolation are still a death metal institution without equal. What Wagner is to the symphony, Immolation are to death metal!
The rest of the evening also played out in the colors of death metal, except this time it wasn’t wrapped in a cloud of blasphemy but in a cloud of smoke. Six Feet Under didn’t just march onto the stage in artificial fog. I’d bet my hand that Chris Barnes rolled himself one monstrously huge Czech joint before the show. The death metal incarnation of stoner duo Cheech and Chong launched into the set without mercy with the Cannibal Corpse classic Stripped, Raped and Strangled, then carried on with a pretty unfortunate choice of songs. Why? Because, if memory serves, the setlist had only one song from the latest record, Undead, which is the discographic peak of Six Feet Under’s career. Barnes’ short-term memory probably doesn’t work anymore and he simply forgot about Undead. The band did play a superb one-hour stormer of a set, which is no surprise, since this time Barnes gathered a crew of technically excellent musicians around him, led by the phenomenal drummer Kevin Talley (ex-Misery Index, ex-Dying Fetus, ex-Decrepit Birth, Daath, etc.). From Barnes we once again got exactly what we expected: brutal croaking, piggy squealing and the spinning of meter-long dreadlocks that the front rows probably cashed in a souvenir or two from. Six Feet Under lived up to their name, proved they’re in great form, and wrapped up the show in style with one more Cannibal Corpse anthem, Hammer Smashed Face.
The festival’s peak was the return of heavyweight comebackers At the Gates, the legendary Swedish death metal outfit that laid the foundations of the Gothenburg sound in the early nineties and so flung the doors wide open for the somewhat later newcomers In Flames and Dark Tranquillity. In 1995 At the Gates released the groundbreaking classic Slaughter of the Soul, but soon after, at the peak of their career, they called it quits. The trio of Björler brothers plus Adrian Erlandsson carried on with The Haunted, the unstoppable vocalist Thomas »Tompa« Lindberg with a heap of projects (Lock Up, Disfear, Nightrage and a pile of others), and guitarist Martin Larsson in Agrimonia. In 2007 At the Gates announced a big live comeback and a one-and-only summer festival tour, after which they retired again. But the incredible response from fans who didn’t get a chance to see the band in its first incarnation luckily made AtG eat their words and come back in 2010 for another tour, which, at least for now, has no end in sight. Summer 2012 carried At the Gates back to Slovenia for the first time since 1996 (where they played this year’s Metalcamp), and four days later back to the Czech Republic for the first time since 1995. Sorry for the ultra-subjective text that follows, but there’s just no other way this time. I got goosebumps the very moment the backdrop with the At the Gates logo unfurled on stage. The Swedes are a band that holds a special place for me, and after the obligatory Iron Maiden and Metallica, Slaughter of the Soul was the very first extreme metal album that caressed my ears. The quintet, as expected but phenomenally, kicked off their set with the title anthem Slaughter of the Soul, and Tompa’s cult »GO!« marked the stormy start of an unforgettable spectacle of death metal backed by the twisted melodies that made At the Gates so unique. The only real flaw was the really badly mixed guitar of Anders Björler (though after n-teen listens to the AtG discography, his fantastic solos are burned into my cerebral cortex and were echoing in my ears all by themselves), plus the poor communication from Tomas Lindberg, who had nothing to offer beyond announcing songs. Most likely because of a colossal hangover, since he stuck around the festival after the Lock Up gig. Nothing spoiled his vocal performance though. Tompa’s voice still sounds aggressive and brutal, that unique half-growl/half-scream like a rabid dog. Together with the unforgettable guitar acrobatics of the Björler/Larsson duo and the crushing drumming of Adrian Erlandsson, At the Gates build a monumental wall of sound full of epic moments that pump you so full of energy you’d want to grab the nearest Czech and hurl him onto the stage, rip off your own head and literally headbang with it, and in a rush of melo-death ecstasy gnaw off your leg and play air guitar on it. The setlist would have been a dream in any case, and a nearly complete Slaughter of the Soul is a live experience without equal that easily shows why that record is such a classic. Mighty, punchy, epic, and even more beautiful alongside older classics like Terminal Spirit Disease, Raped By the Light of Christ, Windows and All Life Ends. The peak was definitely the close of the regular set with Need, the lights going out and industrial rumbling leading into the band’s biggest hit, the earth-shaking neck-breaker Blinded By Fear. »Sweet nauseating pain!« Far too soon, At the Gates (hopefully not for the last time) said goodbye with the old-school Kingdom Gone and went up in flames with the taped The Flames of the End. A bit subjective, but without a doubt the best gig of this year’s Brutal Assault. Purgatory Unleashed!
After At the Gates I kind of lost interest in the remaining acts. I quickly skimmed through Immortal’s »Sons of northern darkness«, blew the last of my Czech crowns and drank one last farewell beer. Moonspell and Godflesh sadly had to wait for next time. It’s clear why Brutal Assault is probably the fastest-growing metal festival in Europe. Every year the Czechs surprise with an excellent lineup of bands that offer truly the best of the more extreme metal genres, and organizationally they try harder and harder (fixing the weak spots of previous years and introducing many novelties). This year’s only real blunder was swapping the beer supplier. All that’s left is to say see you next year at Brutal Assault 2013!
Setlist
TEXTURES:
1. Surreal State of Enlightenment
2. Regenesis
3. Storm Warning
4. Stream of Consciousness
5. Sanguine Draws the Oath
6. Awake
8. Laments of An Icarus
SOLSTAFIR:
1. Ljos i Stormi
2. Pin Ord
3. Fjara
4. Goddess of the Ages
KYLESA:
1. Tired Climb
2. Don’t Look Back
3. Said and Done
4. Running Red
5. Forsaken
6. Scapegoat
IMMOLATION:
1. Close to a World Below
2. Swarm of Terror
3. Majesty and Decay
4. What They Bring
5. Into Everlasting Fire
6. Under the Supreme
7. Unholy Cult
8. No Jesus, No Beast
9. Dawn of Possession
AT THE GATES:
1. Slaughter of the Soul
2. Cold
3. Terminal Spirit Disease
4. Raped By the Light of Christ
5. Under a Serpent Sun
6. Windows
7. World of Lies
8. The Swarm
9. Suicide Nation
10. Nausea
11. All Life Ends
12. Need
13. Blinded By Fear
14. Kingdom Gone
15. Flames of the End (outro)
IMMORTAL:
1. Withstand the Fall of Time
2. Sons of Northern Darkness
3. Damned in Black
4. Triumph
5. The Call of the Wintermoon
6. In My Kingdom Cold
7. Tyrants
8. One By One
9. All Shall Fall
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