review by: Roberto Martinelli

I strategically arrived at the club in order to miss the first two acts yet still be in plenty of time to see Vader. Origin certainly is an impressive band in terms of its playing skills, but if the record seems monotonous, then one only needs to begin to imagine how this sound would translate in a death metal show setting to understand how truly tedious it would be. As it turned out, my worst skepticism held true for the band I was enthusiastic in seeing.

I did get there in time to see a bit of The Berzerker, whom I was hoping to miss entirely. I got their first album way back when to review, and at the time I remember thinking it was one of the worst albums ever. The Australian band still has got its freakish monster mask thing going, which gave their show a truly frightening aura as they ripped through something absurdly fast and with a triggered drum sound that no one could possibly like.

Next was Vader, who had just arrived a few hours before on a 12-hour drive from Portland, Oregon. The band took a pretty long time to sound check, which was ridiculous considering how bad their show sounded. I don't understand what the point is of having an exhaustive sound check of each tom on a kit if a) the tom sounds shit and b) there is no discernable difference the first time the tom gets played during the sound check and the last (supposedly adjusted) time it does. The mic was obviously too low even during the sound check but nothing was ever done to correct it.

Seriously, I think it's time for metal fans to begin to question the values that are spinning out of control in the live setting, particularly in the death metal genre. The main issue has to do with triggered drums. Indeed bands like Vader rely heavily on the double bass attack, but no one wants to listen to songs that are incoherent noise with a clear but obnoxiously pumped up kick drum sound. At least you would think so. I'm always amazed how much people seem to get into these shows that sound like sonic slop to me, shows featuring bands whose material I know and love. I'm a huge Vader fan, but a lot of times I had trouble recognizing the song as everything from the vocals to the riffs were drowned out by the bass drums. You could hardly even hear the snare drum. Making the music sound like this doesn't make it more brutal, it just makes it more boring. The show wasn't as bad as the total mud that I experienced in September when Nile headlined at the same club, but it was pretty bad.

Immolation suffered from the same problem, but their sound was better than Vader's; at least you could make out riffs. Still, it was a disappointing and perplexing night. On the one hand you have these bands that play flawlessly, as Vader did when I saw them at Wacken 2000 (during a set that was ironically not very loud by metal standards, which of course resulted in my being able to hear everything that they were doing), but they play with a sound that makes it nigh impossible to make out exactly what's going on. It's sad that with this kind of metal, the best idea is to save your money on live shows and buy more CDs, or just go to different kinds of shows.

Back to top