Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Vojenska pevnost Josefov, Jaromer, Czech Republic
Concert date: 11.08.2010
Attendance: 15
Ticket price: 59€
The year flew by, and just like that it was time for Brutal Assault again, set in the unique surroundings of the old Prussian military fortress of Josefov in the town of Jaromer. This time the festival was celebrating a very respectable fifteenth anniversary, and the Czech organizers once again went all out with a colorful and seriously interesting lineup. This year also saw the first-ever “warm-up” night, which didn’t exactly deliver anything thrilling. In fact, I called it quits on the warm-up after just a few moments of the Czech “avant-garde” band Prvni Hore, whose guy on stage was dressed as a clown, doing the “robot dance”, while the music got “enriched” with an accordion on top. I think that needs no further comment. That left more time to explore the sprawling grounds, sample five kinds of beer and acclimatize to the festival action, which was going to be wildly eventful for the next three days.
The first band of the opening day truly worth watching were, without a doubt, the legendary Floridian death metallers Obituary. One of the pioneers of death metal ran us over without mercy and without a single word, starting with the instrumental opener Redneck Stomp. With that “trademark” Obituary groove and stomp, it really sounds like something that would be ringing in your ears while two 400-pound rednecks in jean overalls, dead drunk on homemade moonshine, jump up and down on you. After three minutes the iconic frontman, the phenomenal croaker John Tardy, joined the instrumental foursome on stage, and Obituary pushed us into an hour-long tornado. Seeing Obituary live is truly priceless, because even if they wanted to, they couldn’t play badly. There’s the excellent Donald Tardy behind the drums, with the most perfect snare sound in the world, one that sounds like bones breaking in Asian kung-fu/ninja movies, and with simple but unbelievably effective fills he does far, far more than technically maybe better drummers who measure their manhood by how fast they can hit the bass drum. I couldn’t imagine the band without the brilliant Trevor Peres on rhythm guitar, who’s largely to blame for that Obituary sound you can recognize from miles away, and he’s unmistakable with his sawing of simple but inventive riffs that slice you into little pieces… Like sticking your head into the fan of a swamp boat on the Florida bayous. The complete opposite of Peres, with his mountain-man look, is the showy (almost poser-ish) lead guitarist Ralph Santolla, who you can tell from a distance has Italian blood running through his veins. He does his job well, even though plenty of people still hiccup over the excellent Allan West. Terry Butler (Six Feet Under) slotted nicely into the lineup, replacing bassist Frank Watkins, who defected inglamorously to Gorgoroth (more on them a few lines below), and John Tardy, as always, delivered the sickest, most psychopathic, most depraved death metal growls you can imagine. When the Obituary also serve up a great setlist that slowly rotted and decayed with classics like Turned Inside Out, Dethroned Emperor (a cover of the legendary Celtic Frost), and Threatening Skies, the result can only be one of the best gigs of this year’s festival. And the eternal classics Chopped in Half and Slowly We Rot felt like Pinhead from the cult classic Hellraiser was talking about Obituary through them: “We have such sights to show you!”
This year the festival organizers unfortunately decided to also bring in some commercially slightly slicker names of “extreme” metal. At least in my opinion, this somewhat ruined the concept of the festival, the whole point of which is supposed to be bands from extreme metal genres that don’t usually attract teenage crowds. Anyway, next up were the Finnish “folk/viking” metallers Ensiferum. Last year they released the well-received album From Afar, which they’re still promoting and enjoying quite a bit of success with, since being a Viking is just extremely popular right now. Even though From Afar isn’t a bad album, Ensiferum haven’t been what they used to be ever since key member Jari Mäenpää left (he founded Wintersun, put out an excellent debut with them, and now has been dragging his feet on the follow-up, which we’ll see God knows when). That showed above all in the band’s live show, which was anything but the energetic one Ensiferum used to be known for. Frontman Petri Lindroos didn’t seem to be in his element either, and his “oi, oi” shouts weren’t exactly successful at hyping up the crowd. The hopeless sound didn’t help them either, completely smothering the guitar melodies and keyboards (played by Emmi Silvennoinen, who at least gives your eyes a rest, hehe), so all you could mostly hear was the “oompa oompa” triggered drums and the crunching of guitars. But the teenage fans obviously weren’t bothered and happily sang along to the admittedly very melodic and catchy choruses of the Viking chansons Into Battle, Token of Time, Ahti, Stone Cold Metal and the obligatory closer One More. If you want to feel like a real, hairy, tr00 Viking with the help of bouncy choruses and deliberately, outrageously catchy melodies and guitar harmonies, together with quasi-epic atmospheric keyboards, Ensiferum are the right choice for you.
As day turned into night, one of the best new metal bands of the last few years, the French band Gojira, “got the job done” with a fantastic atmosphere and one of the best performances of the festival. The guys got noticed with their very first demo recordings, back when they still played under the name Godzilla, and then had to change it to the romaji spelling of the name, Gojira, because of copyright issues. Under the new name they released their debut Terra Incognita and got noticed, signed a deal with the label Listenable on the strength of the previous record From Mars to Sirius (where they share a home today with our champions Noctiferia!), and with The Way of All Flesh, released two years ago, they finally anchored themselves on the throne of modern metal, justified their reputation as one of the most promising young bands, and signaled that we can still expect a huge amount from them in the future. Especially judging by the show at this year’s Brutal Assault, which was so powerful and uncompromising that it looked like the legendary Japanese monster had really mixed into the crowd and created a proper apocalypse in the mosh pit. Gojira blew the heads off all the doubters (and really everyone present in front of the stage) with the opening crusher Oroborus, when guitarists Joe Duplantier and Christian Andreu casually started trading breathtaking tapped arpeggios in the first moments, with plenty of unbelievable guitar wizardry in the form of unique hammer-on and pull-off tricks. When the duo were joined by the technically flawless drummer Mario Duplantier and bassist Jean-Michel Labadie, Gojira stomped the stunned audience one last time and sent the area in front of the stage into a devastating earthquake. The guys devoted the entire set to the last two records and somewhat unfairly skipped the first two entirely, but the mix of unbridled brutality, formed by the crushing drumming and apocalyptic riffs, and the brilliant melodics, created by the nimble fingers of the guitar duo gliding across their fretboards, was the reason for some unforgettable moments. Joe Duplantier almost succeeded in his demand for a monstrous wall of death stretching from the very start to the very end of the grounds, if only the Czechs weren’t so stubborn with English and had actually understood what Joe wanted from them. With the songs Oroborus, Flying Whales, Toxic Garbage Island and the ten-minute epic masterpiece The Art of Dying, Gojira drew attention to the themes of their lyrics with incredible effectiveness. The deep message about environmental destruction, which humanity takes for granted, took on an even deeper meaning under the setting sun… that humanity will have only itself to blame for its zenith!
Gojira:
1. Oroborus
2. Backbone
3. Flying Whales
4. Toxic Garbage Island
5. The Art of Dying
6. Vacuity
Just as it got dark, the “all-star” grind band Lock Up were due to play, but on that Friday evening at nine o’clock they were replaced by Sepultura. Plenty has been written about Sepultura already, and it still obviously can’t be ignored that Sepultura are missing their key piece, Max Cavalera. But so much water has flowed under that bridge that you could refill the Pannonian Sea with it, so let’s focus instead on the show by Sepultura 2.0. The guys greeted us with the ominous intro A-Lex 1/Moloko Mesto, which opens the current album A-Lex and conceptually retells the cult novel by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, or rather its film version from the hands of the brilliant Stanley Kubrick. They didn’t let us rest for long and right at the start threw us back to the “old-school” Sepultura days with the classic Arise. That song and every other one were played on the spot, brutalized, merciless and fiercely aggressive, so your head barely stayed on your neck, but the songs were noticeably sped up compared to the original versions and so lost a bit of that real Sepultura magic. Sadly, it really, really shows that a guitar is missing, because the sound loses quite a bit of intensity and power during Kisser’s solos, a shame that at least during the solos Green doesn’t pick up a guitar anymore. Otherwise, the giant Derrick Green does more than a great job in his vocal role, he just has the bad luck of having stepped into shoes that are too big, according to many (I’d say he’s in the same position Ripper was in when he replaced Halford in Judas Priest). Some might also take issue with the setlist, since it was mostly made up of nothing but classics (which made it that much sweeter!), mixed with a few songs from the album A-Lex and one single track from Dante XXI. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion on today’s Sepultura, but with songs like Arise, Refuse/Resist, Troops of Doom, Escape to the Void and Inner Self they put a smile on plenty of faces and played a great show.
Sepultura:
1. A-Lex 1/Moloko Mesto
2. Arise
3. Refuse/Resist
4. What I Do!
5. Convicted in Life
6. The Treatment
7. Troops of Doom
8. Escape to the Void
9. Territory
10. Inner Self
11. Ratamahatta
12. Roots Bloody Roots
One of the most anticipated bands of this year’s Brutalec were without a doubt the industrial metal giants Fear Factory. All the more so because they should have played last year already, but it all got complicated. Fear Factory first broke up in 2002 because of internal disputes (supposedly because of the super-guitarist Dino Cazares, who claimed ownership of everything done under the name Fear Factory). They came back the very next year, that time without Dino on guitar and with a new bassist, Byron Stroud (Strapping Young Lad, Devin Townsend, Tenet, Zimmers Hole), and last year Fear Factory announced a big comeback to the scene with the lineup of Burton C. Bell (vocals), Dino Cazares (guitar), Byron Stroud (bass) and Gene Hoglan (drums). That obviously didn’t sit well with original members drummer Raymond Herrera and bassist/guitarist Christian Olde Wolbers, who reportedly own half the rights to the Fear Factory name. The dispute between the Bell/Cazares and Herrera/Wolbers camps ended up in court, and Fear Factory canceled their appearance at last year’s festival, officially because of recording a new record. Well, the dispute has evidently been smoothed over, and Fear Factory finally rolled into this year’s edition of Brutal Assault. Unfortunately, they left quite a bitter taste… or maybe the anticipation was just too strong. Fear Factory devoted a big chunk of the set to presenting the new record, Mechanize, and played as many as four songs from it. It was nice to hear the excellent title track Mechanize and the single Powershifter, but I’m surely not the only one who expected a few more classics among the eleven songs played. The rest of the setlist consisted of songs that roughly cut across the band’s career, but with only one song, Shock, they decidedly underrepresented the cult debut Soul of a New Machine. The instrumental trio lived up to their reputation as technically superbly prepared sawmen, especially Cazares with his gorgeous eight-string, Byron with his liveliness, and the proverbially fantastic Hoglan, who isn’t one of the biggest names in metal drumming for nothing. It’s surprising, though, that the stage even held up under the weight of three nicely well-fed gentlemen, hehe. As for the bone of contention, this time it turned out to be vocalist Burton C. Bell, who joined the band way back in 1989 after Cazares heard him singing U2 in a hotel room… “How gay is that, hehe?”. Bell, who as one of the very first brought clean vocals into death metal, completely burned out vocally this time. If the growled parts weren’t a big problem for him, he hopelessly botched the clean vocal parts that are Fear Factory’s trademark, and several times his voice cracked completely. It was really nice to finally see Fear Factory live, but from a band that has so effectively mixed and fused the genres of thrash and death metal, industrial and alternative throughout its career, I still expected much more than an average show.
Fear Factory
1. Mechanize
2. Shock
3. Edgecrusher
4. Acres of Skin
5. Powershifter
6. Fear Campaign
7. Christplotation
8. Martyr
9. Demanufacture
10. Self Bias Resistor
11. Replica
The Finnish band Children of Bodom stuck out badly from the festival’s concept, at least in my opinion, and clearly drew the most squealing teenage girls under the stage, the kind who get wet at the mere mention of Alexi Laiho’s name. With an intro in which the word fuck was repeated n times, so beloved by the band’s frontman, Children of Bodom showed how moronic their lyrics are and proved that their form has been steadily and steeply declining ever since the third album, Follow the Reaper. Every release after that last really good album was a quality step down from the one before, so my ears only perked up at a handful of songs from the first three records, and the debut was ignored altogether anyway. When Alexi opened his mouth during the set with primitive, idiotic and pathetic banter full of the articulate and supremely intellectual words fuck, mother fucker and the like, all that was left was to treat my ears to a well-deserved rest under the tent with a beer and at the metal market.
Children of Bodom
1. Follow the Reaper
2. Hate Crew Deathroll
3. Needled 24/7
4. Every Time I Die
5. Living Dead Beat
6. Sixpounder
7. Blooddrunk
8. In Your Face
9. Angels Don’t Kill
10. Hate Me!
11. Downfall
My ears went through similar horror during the hopelessly bad set by the Norwegian ultra-evil black metallers Gorgoroth. All you could actually make out was Pest’s incredibly bad barking and the rape of the double bass pedal. I can therefore quite rightly rename them Gorgošrot (“scrap heap” in Slovenian). Satan! (if I may quote the cult interview with the band’s former frontman Gaahl, who these days sews little dresses with his lover).
Thank God the elders of doom metal, Candlemass, provided a quality, majestic and fitting finale to Thursday evening. The Swedes showed how things are done and what a quality live show means. They created a brilliant doom atmosphere already with the opening Chopin’s Marche Funebre, which they covered on the cult record Nightfall from 1987. Every time they play their epic doom/heavy metal and crushers like the doom classics Mirror Mirror, Samarithan and At the Gallows End, they prove that Candlemass have no equal in doom metal. I dare say that the incredible, charismatic frontman Robert Lowe (Solitude Aeternus) sings them even better than the legendary Messiah Marcolin, who is still irreplaceable for many even today. But I believe Lowe, with the phenomenal vocal performance he put on at Brutal Assault, confirms my claim, and with the coolest banter between songs he also confirms that he’s an exceptional frontman and showman too. The whole band proves they’re unbeatable live, from the mighty bass playing of mastermind Leif Edling, perfectly complemented by the cannon-like drumming of Jan Lindh, not to mention the dark and punchy riffs of the guitar duo. It’s incredible to hear how well Candlemass’s trademark alternation between punchy epic sections and classic doom-heavy, morbid and melancholic passages works live, and how Candlemass simply shine in both “categories”. They wrapped up their set spectacularly with the eternal doom classic Solitude, the opening track of the debut Epicus Doomicus Metalicus, which, as the first real doom metal album, is basically to blame for all the doom metal made since!
Candlemass:
1. Marche Funebre (Intro)
2. Dark are the Veils of Death
3. Mirror Mirror
4. Samarithan
5. If I Ever Die
6. Hammer of Doom
7. Emperor of the Void
8. At the Gallows End
9. Solitude
A good number of bands, exhaustion and the damn bad deathcore of the Americans Despised Icon took their toll, and I unfortunately listened to the set by the American metal theater GWAR from the tent, gathering strength for the next day.
Photos: Nina Grad
Setlist
Disfigured Corpse Short Sharp Shock Afgrund Minority Sound Demonic Resurrection Insania Bonded By Blood Rotten Sound Trail of Tears Suicidal Angels The Black Dahlia Murder Obituary Ensiferum Gojira Sepultura Fear Factory Children of Bodom Gorgoroth Candlemass Despised Icon GWAR
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