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Vader Concert Review
Considering our culture’s love affair with sequels, it was only reasonable to assume that the success of this year’s Summer Slaughter would inspire other semi-festivals to head for the road once again. Enter the 2007 Death By Decibels tour, led by Vader, Malevolent Creation, and Cattle Decapitation, which made its stop in Chicago at the Logan Square Auditorium this past Sunday. u
It wasn’t until I arrived at the venue that I heard the phrase ‘Death By Decibels’. Until that point, I’d thought of this tour as Vader’s headlining return and had been rather skeptical of how packed the bill was—eight bands, all told, the first three from Chicago. However, the evening progressed surprisingly quickly, and by the end I was won over by the Death By Decibels name, although it did take till the very end of the night to persuade me.
Logan Square Auditorium is an odd venue, sequestered away on the third floor of a building in a residential district of the same name. In truth, it’s more like a hideout than a legitimate concert arena, but it gets a fairly steady stream of shows and has been the favored haunt of Necrophagist over the years, among others. Kicking this off this evening, at around 5:15 to a sparse crowd, was a trio of Chicago quartets, starting with Blood Loss.
I honestly wasn’t expecting much from this group of youngsters, but they put on a fairly solid show. Their heavy sampling of metalcore and ostentatious breakdowns didn’t seem to sit too well with much of the crowd, but it was hard to deny the talent of their lead guitarist and their energy, although their drummer wasn’t all that dynamic. Apparently, the band are working on a full-length release and are set for more Midwest touring thereafter, so it should be interesting to see how things turn out for them. All in all, I enjoyed their set more than I thought I would, and certainly more than I enjoy Lamb of God, whose t-shirt their guitarist was wearing.
Second to the stage was Beneath the Flesh, who put the evening back on track with a rumbling style of brutish death metal replete with bristling solos, death motifs, and a dreadlocked lead vocalist. Once again, it was the lead guitarist who helped the group stand out and diverted the audience’s attention from sludgier sections that, once again, verged on breakdowns. The vocalist was the one most responsible for winning over the crowd, though, when he dedicated their final song, “to all the emo fags and their gay shit.” This of course drew a cheer from some of the more surly members of the crowd as well as the mosh pit, which remained active throughout the night.
Following them were the misfits of the tour, Veil of Maya. Someone in the crowd wondered aloud whether they had taken the name from the Cynic song, but once they got under way we decided that it was unlikely. Although they billed themselves as ‘death metal’ in part, Veil of Maya are much closer to the deathcore that’s enjoying so much success today. Their breakdowns are massive and lumbering, their instrumentation highly technical, and their vocals the expected mixture of high and low growls. While this isn’t quite the style that appealed to most of the people in the crowd, those fans they did have made themselves hard to miss. Flying up to the front of the stage and back, their slam-dancing dominated the pit and really seemed to energize the band. Altogether, Veil of May are a competent and passionate group, but their style just seemed a little out of place with this crowd.
Once they were through, perhaps around 7:00, the evening really began to pick up steam. Due to Abigail Williams’s absence (apparently their van broke down), Light This City would kick off the second half of the bill. In fact, if the bill had ended with Light This City, this tour would have drawn a much more unanimous audience. Although their debut album ‘Facing The Thousand’ has plenty of ‘authentic metal’ to it, they still include enough moshpit anthems and scenester bravura to mesh with the opening bands on the bill.
During their set-up they had some issues with the sound booth—the first of many—but were able to get under way soon enough and were no less energetic for the delay. As is their custom, they snapped into high gear immediately upon receiving the go-ahead light, which came as a surprise to some in the audience who weren’t familiar with them. The veteran fans, though, had been anxiously awaiting their own signal to explode, and once the set started they surged to the front row. There weren’t many of them, but they made up for their few numbers with energy, singing along, waggling their fingers at the guitarists during solos, keeping the mosh pit active, and giving Laura some willing chests for her to mimic ripping hearts from.
The band seemed a little more at home at Logan Square and with this line-up than they had last time around down in Mokena with Edguy and Into Eternity. Logan Square is a more intimate venue that draws a more youthful audience, both of which favor the band’s style and live show. As with the other bands, though, their set was short and after half an hour they were ushered off the stage by the house music, Thin Lizzy’s ‘Jailbreak’.
During these earlier bands and in the following layover the crowd continued to grow, and by the beginning of the next set around 8:10 (after more sound problems), it had reached a rather respectable size. There was still a wide berth for the mosh pit between the front few rows and the rest of the audience, but it proved to be no more than was necessary once Cattle Decapitation took the stage and laid it to waste.
Travis Ryan opened the set with an eerie sequence of rasping vocalise drenched in reverb, delivered almost tenderly with his eyes closed as the smoke machine pumped out a dense mist. Then, without any warning the band erupted into a 30-minute frenzy of gore-soaked grindcore as maniacal as any show I’ve seen. Ryan in particular performed with a bestial mania that, of the performers I’ve seen, only Lord Worm can match.
Like the rest of the band, he seemed rather quiet and reserved before the set, but during each song he was uninhibited and completely unpredictable. When not shrieking indecipherably into the microphone, he would flail about the stage like a man in a seizure, messily douse himself with water and belch the remainder onto the floor, spit into the air and stick out his tongue to catch it again, empty his nose farmer-style towards the audience, and leap out onto the front row at random. Plenty of metal bands today play with violent abandon, but Ryan was truly wild.
As for the rest of the band, their calm dispassion only served to emphasize Ryan’s performance. Josh Elmore played his guitar with as much fury as Ryan sang, but his stage presence was completely opposed. Aside from the blurring speed of his hands, he looked uninvolved and expressionless, and between songs, as Ryan addressed us with sarcastic distaste, Elmore would only lay his hand across the neck of his guitar and stare coldly, unblinking at the stage in front of him. The rest of the band were similar in this respect and performed very well in their own rights, but Elmore and Ryan were the focal points of the band and played off one another to great success.
Their set was also the first that brought the audience together, and from the beginning of their set straight through the end of ‘Karma Bloody Karma’, horns were up in the front rows and the moshpit was moving. Cattle may not have headlined this show and may not draw the crowd that Vader does, but they more than satisfied all their fans that night and converted plenty more by the time they left the stage.
Next up was Malevolent Creation, one of America’s original death metal stalwarts, featuring the core members of their classic line-up: Brett Hoffman on vocals and Phil Fasciana and Jon Rubin on guitars, with the line-up fleshed out by Fabian Aguirre on drums and Marco Martell on bass. They certainly put on a veteran’s set, too, exuding a confidence and chemistry on stage that only comes through experience. Brett led them with his strong vocals, not particularly varied in their approach but very consistent, as is his wont. He was very deliberate on stage, windmill-headbanging in place, stabbing his finger from time to time, and locking his eyes on audience members as he held out the long notes. Their set began with a few of their newest songs, but also included some older material from when Brett was on hiatus, such as their closer, ‘Living in Fear’, and songs from both eras had many in the front row singing along.
The two guitarists put on performances similar to Brett’s, although Phil, with his Gene Simmons tongue and bullet-belt, seemed to take to the spotlight more than Jon, who was content to headbang to himself as he played. A few times it sounded as though their riffing fell out of step, but the excellent (if underutilized) rhythm section quickly caught up to any missteps. Besides, Malevolent Creation’s style of militant rumbling doesn’t always need to be technically perfect for its atmosphere to succeed, and this evening was no exception.
Once they were through, perhaps at around 9:40, the stage was finally set for Vader. I’d missed these Polish legends the previous times they’d come to the states, so this would be my first encounter, and when the lights finally dimmed and the band emerged I put my camera aside for a minute to chant along with the rest of the crowd.
The band took their positions to the intro track of ‘Impressions of Blood’ and slid into ‘Shadow Fear’ right on cue. Cleared of extra amps and the six members of Malevolent Creation the stage had been looking rather empty, but the four members of Vader had no trouble filling it with their stage presence and massive sound. At center stage stood Peter, looking every bit the Polish death metalhead, with a full-print Vader cut-off T, occult tattoos, and steel-toed boots with fire patterns across the toes. He stood most often with his feet wide apart and knees bent, his flying-V guitar angled outwards and the mike stand angled downwards from above. At his feet were a wide array of pedals that he would use during his divebomb solos, though not nearly so much as the tremolo arm, which was his favorite tool. As he sang in a voice as gruff and surly as ever, he would occasionally gesture in emphasis, raising his arms to imitate wings or hold a hand over his eyes.
Off to his left was Novy on the bass, slapping madly away with thumb and pinky, nearly showing up Peter for stage presence and energy with his fierce headbanging and crowd interaction. On the right side of the stage was Mauser, more quiet than the others but no less proficient, and whose solo duels with Peter were a highlight of the set. Finally, anchoring the assault from his glittering red kit was Daray, the highly skilled heir of Doc who carries on Vader’s brutal percussive tradition with honor.
After ‘Shadow Fear’, Vader tore through the next 45 minutes with an excellent setlist that drew freely from all eras, with the first half running as follows: ‘Sothis’, ‘Helleluyah!!!’, ‘Warlords’, ‘Epitaph’, ‘Silent Empire’, ‘Carnal’, ‘Black to the Blind’, and ‘The Book’. Then followed a minute’s intermission for the band to catch their breath while the audience’s attention was kept by ‘Para Bellum’. This led directly into ‘This is the War’ and the rest of the second half: ‘Lead us!!!’, ‘Dark Age’, ‘Xeper’, ‘Reign Forever World’, a phenomenal cover of ‘Black Sabbath’, ‘Wings’, and their closer/encore, ‘Incarnation’.
It was a set that included some surprises, the cover most notably, plenty of variety, and not a dull moment to speak of. While it did feature a few from the newest album, there were surprisingly few from other new releases—not a single track from ‘The Beast’ and only one from ‘Revelations’. Still, the variety of their selection left little to ask for, from the nearly a cappella verses of ‘Carnal’ to the classic thrasher ‘Dark Age’.
The crowd was fully appreciative, too, chanting the members’ names and ‘Vader!’ between songs. Chicago’s perennially strong Polish contingency bantered with Peter a bit during the set as well, and one bold fan even hopped up on stage twice to get closer to them. When the band had left the stage for good and the chants were finally dying down, he got up on stage a third time to snag a drumstick and follow the band off-stage before the crew could stop him, since there were no security guards to do it for them.
While I can’t say that I would be so bold as he, I can certainly say that the temptation was there. Vader could have played for two hours and we still would have wanted more. If Death by Decibels turns up again next year, there will be plenty of fans hoping that the name won’t be the only thing making a repeat appearance.
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