Cannibal Corpse/The Faceless/Neuraxis/Obscura
MacEwen Hall, Calgary, April 13 2009
By Neil Hauer
Live death metal is quite a unique phenomenon. Barring the obvious differences, it’s not so far removed from skydiving – it’s filled with adrenaline, slightly frightening and impossible to accurately convey to one who has not actively partaken in it. I was hardly familiar with either, so I was eager to refresh my memory with a healthy dosage of
Cannibal Corpse and their tourmates, especially emerging progressive death metal prodigies
Obscura. It didn’t hurt that the show was conveniently located fifty feet from my economics classroom! After finishing my scholarly pursuits for the day, I was lucky enough to catch Paul Mazurkiewicz for a short chat before the concert, which you can read
here. There were still a number of hours until the show, so rather than linger on campus I opted to head home for a while, figuring it would raise no issues.
Obscura
Unfortunately, if something can go wrong, it will, and I arrived at the show’s scheduled starting time to see
Obscura standing at their merch table while
Neuraxis ripped into the first song of their set. Making the best of a poor situation, I took the chance to salvage what I could by meeting them and giving fellow bassist Jeroen Thesseling (whose birthday it happened to be) my regards for his stellar work on
Pestilence’s jazz-metal opus Spheres. Frontman Steffen Kummerer also expressed his admiration for my
Atheist shirt, proving the old adage that great minds do indeed think alike.
Neuraxis
Donning my freshly-procured
Cosmogenesis attire, I headed towards the stage to better absorb the intricate pyrotechnics of
Neuraxis. Being previously unfamiliar with their work, my respect for them at this point stemmed solely from their Canadian nationality, but upon hearing their unique brand of technical death it quickly became obvious this adulation was certainly justified. Despite lacking a bass player, they were able to fire off an impressive sequence of racing death metal numbers, surprisingly unhindered by their lack of a low end. They would also prove to have the best mix of the night, with crisp drumming, crunching guitars and commanding vocals. Overall, their performance was thoroughly enjoyable and made the lack of
Obscura sting slightly less.
The Faceless
Following them was a band I had heard much about, but never listened to myself:
The Faceless. I knew they too played some form of progressive death metal, and being the last opening band I was expecting them to deliver a performance that was at least competent. I could hardly have been more misguided. The first signs of the musical atrocities that were to come were the irritating piped-in vocoder vocals that opened their first song. Apparently not satisfied by subjecting their listeners to a mere one instance of this shrill, robotic cacophony, they made sure to insert it at a multitude of inopportune moments, which combined with the seemingly aimless technical noodling of the guitarists and trendhopping deathcore wailing of the vocalist to produce an opener that was irritating to the extreme. Repeat this formula seven or eight times, occasionally replacing the autotuned vocals with equally subpar clean ones and forcing in the odd conspicuously out of place “jazz” break, and you have a basic idea of how
The Faceless’s fifty minutes of stage time went. It appears their musical philosophy revolves around combining mediocre, overdone deathcore with copious amounts of
Cynic worship in an attempt to be labelled progressive. I guess no one told them that
Cynic’s fame stems from their groundbreaking and fluent combination of metal and fusion elements, not from near-plagiarism of an existing band’s style.
Cannibal Corpse
After spending the break between bands drowning all memory of
The Faceless’s performance in the beer gardens, I headed back upstairs to catch the night’s main event: the legendary
Cannibal Corpse. They immediately roared into action with the chugging title track from their latest offering,
Evisceration Plague. Never having been much of a Corpse fan, I was surprised at the level of proficiency with which they executed their material, especially bassist Alex Webster. I was well aware of his talents, being an avid
Blotted Science listener, and he solidified his reputation as a virtuoso with his relentlessly accurate bass lines. The sound man appeared unaware of this, however, and as such the bass was at a nearly inaudible volume compared to the rest of the band, who were somewhat hard to distinguish themselves. Despite the muddy sound, the band were firing on all cylinders, and they delivered an exhaustive set of death metal classics worthy of their reputation. Corpsegrinder, eloquent as always, delivered perhaps the best line of the night during an introduction to one of CC’s classics (‘
I Cum Blood’), when he announced that, “this next song is about shooting BLOOOOOOOOOD from your COOOOOOCK!” Fully astute this evening, he also made the somewhat depressingly-accurate observation that, “it looks like we have about ten girls here… good turnout for a death metal show.” The band closed out the night with an encore headed by their most ‘famous’, if such a word can be applied to extreme metal, song, the
Ace Ventura-gracing ‘
Hammer Smashed Face’. If one negative comment can be applied to their performance, it would likely be the somewhat monotonous nature that is inherent in a set of similarly-paced and structured death metal numbers, but such a thing is hardly noticeable if, like a true metal fan, you spend the entirety of the set deep in the mosh pit.In all, this was a successful trial by fire for three relative newcomers (well, two of three), and a further testimony to the capabilities of a giant.
Official Cannibal Corpse Myspace
Official The Faceless Myspace
Official Neuraxis Myspace
Official Obscura Myspace
