Up for some balls to the wall brutality? The kind of Metal that is an endurance test of solid heavy? Smash your eardrums to your brains and hope the blood flowing will just help the brutality? Death Metal gore masters Aborted team up with old school Tech Death machine’s Cryptopsy, whilst recruiting Slam lords Ingested and some Brutal Death Metal in Unfathomable Ruination. It’s a hard-hitting night of gore and carnage and a wonderful introduction for anyone into some of the best of Death Metal. Ingested were actually second on but greet the large room with that energetic grin as if looking to tear it all apart. Enjoying himself in an ultimately violent sense as he takes the stage, making a pose of anticipation and ferocity. Unfortunately, the stage is rather limited for them as they clearly wanted to get moving about as if a tiger stalking its prey. On top of this energy you have some weighty and beefy riffs, crashing into you with precision and the intent to tear audiences apart. Off the back of The Level Above Human they play a fair few tracks from this album but none seem to cut it quite like ‘Better Off Dead’, though their older ‘The Divine Right of Kings’ and crowd pleasers ‘Skinned and Fucked’ and ‘Anal Evisceration’ that really make their mark. They clearly enjoy it heavy as it can be with loads of hard hitting and powerful riffs and they truly deserve their explosive pits. (8) Whereas Ingested have their new energies as a band getting bigger. Cryptopsy have their weight of being brutal before brutal got big. Their thirty-year career a testament to their carnage of dark and heavy precision. A big household name before the house was being recognised. This carries into their Technical music, which carries with it the deep death grunts and complicated drums of an absolute massacre, whilst adding in some wonderful baselines. In fact, it’s a lot of fun for Death Metal fans to hear ‘Cold Hate, Warm Blood’ make a return, along with some new tracks from their recent EPs The Book of Suffering – Tome 1 and 2: ‘Detritus (The One They Kept)’ and ‘Sire of Sin’. Despite the mixture of old and new they knew to keep many tracks from the 1990s, their ground-breaking skull shattering days of brilliant Death Metal and it went down a treat. The efficient nature of their music is hard not to enjoy, but they certainly would have benefitted from a larger stage to be able to step up the performance a bit. (7) By the time that Aborted took the stage, it had been filled with Death Metal ornaments and flags: album covers and corpses. This partnered with the dark red lights glowing in a dark atmosphere, means that the stage is quite literally set for some brutality. It was the perfect set up for the brutally exciting performance that is the dark and menacing Aborted. Stalking the stage like a lion ready to attack, Svencho’s presence on stage is playful, adventurous and dynamic. He wont stand still but he will roar in various different ways throughout the set. Commanding some brilliant vocals as each song pushes forward. Surrounding this is the absolute punishment of guitars and drums; it is brutal, it is fast and intense. In the small bursts that make up songs like ‘Meticulous Invagination’, ‘Divine Impendement’, ‘Parasitic Flesh Resection’ and ‘Sanguine Verses (…of Extirpation)’ and, of course, the beautifully combined ‘Threading on Vermillion Deception / The Saw and the Carnage is Done’. The sheer energy that is mastered by their precision and well versed Death Metal is the reason that they’re up for headliners. They may not have the old school Death Metal vibes of Cryptopsy nor the absolute hard-hitting riffs of Ingested but their persistent and punishing blast beats and stop start riffs, as well as the excitement that bleeds through each riff, is why Aborted manage to through the Death Metal energy into a completely new area, after the endurance tests of the magnificent line up before them. (8) Deepest regrets go to Unfathomable Ruination, whom we missed but heard very good things about their set. Thanks to all bands and organisers to make this violent music possible for a night. Aborted Facebook: /AbortedOfficial
Twitter: @AbortedMetal Cryptopsy Facebook: /CryptopsyOfficial
Twitter: @CryptopsyBand
Bandcamp: /cryptopsyofficial.bandcamp.com/ Ingested Facebook: /IngestedUK
Twitter: @INGESTED Unfathomable Ruination Facebook: /Unfathomable.Ruination.Official
Bandcamp: /unfathomableruination.bandcamp.com/