One of our staffers is on location and liveblogging this epic and exhausting metal festival which stretches an onslaught of bands over three days. Best to bring your comfy chair and maybe a Kindle so you can sit through the poseur bands.

Day One

Weregoat: noise over a beat. Worthless.

Invocation Spells: melodic speed metal with proto underground, think Merciless mixed with Hellhammer’s faster songs. Songs held together well, which made this enjoyable, even if it did get a bit too vocal lead at times

Infernal War: better understood as angry dance music than metal, beats set the energy for simple stroboscopic two chord riffs at lightning pace contrasted with loping midpaced viking riffs over a rock beat. Body music to the core, did nothing for me.

Crucifier: I’ve always enjoyed these guys a lot more than their affiliated projects. Darkly melodic, energetic without being body only music. Structures are a bit random at times, meaning it won’t stand up to real analysis, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable “in the moment.”

Diocletian: Heavy as Fuck. Playing at the intersection of black metal and noise without being unmusical, monolithic crushing darkness. Bonus points for their bassist’s stage presence, dude is a complete maniac

Demoncy: missed the mark a bit. Joined in Darkness songs but played faster than on album and with the drummer embellishing a bit, which took away quite a bit of their power. It feels like they went for metal show energy instead of the portentousness of the album, to their detriment.

Inquisition are likely to cut into not only Arghoslent’s set but also Graveland’s at the rate they’re going. How a band fucks up so bad so that they eat up all of their set time, all of the band after them, and then that of the headliners after that is beyond me.

Don’t expect an Arghoslent review here — after how bad GBK was, no way am I subjecting my braincells to that

Haha, watching Graveland‘s soundcheck, wasn’t expecting “Raining Blood” to be a favorite riff of those guys!

After taking the stage two hours late for literally no reason, Graveland were great. Set was spread pretty evenly across the pre-Creed of Iron material, and played really professionally. It’s easy to not realize how complex the Following the Voice of Blood songs are, but they played them without a hitch.

Day Two

Invocation Spells, again — because of bands dropping off the bill, we’re getting a second set of this band. Why this one out of all of the possibilities, I have no idea.

Necrowretch: in lieu of a direction, this band randomly combines every style of heavy metal that has ever masqueraded as extreme metal. As bad as the name would make you think.

Ares Kingdom: I’ve always enjoyed these guys live. Epic heavy metal delivered with passion and fury, like “A Fine Day to Die” at Slayer tempos with a monster shredder on guitar.

Adorior: unconvincing. I always liked their second album, but the new one sure does suck, and even the old songs mixed in are being played in the vocals first style of the new one. The soundman burying their rhythm guitarist in the mix isn’t helping.

Usurper: the dumbest stomp riffs Obituary ever wrote apparently weren’t dumb enough for this band, working them into the most brainless call and response songs I’ve ever encountered. Listening to this could probably lower someone’s IQ by 20 points.

Sadistic Intent: if there was ever a platonic form of underground metal, it would be a Sadistic Intent live set. Screaming tremolo melodies conjuring Slayer style evil over racing drums. Unbelievable musicianship and tightness — I could only dream of guitar being as easy for me as it is for Rick Cortez. That’s my fourth time seeing them, and I’m still shocked every time at how excellent they are.

Communion: maybe it’s the come-down after Sadistic Intent, but these guys are boring as shit. The most obvious tremolo picked four note riffs possible repeated into infinity. Very ready for this to end and for Absu to start.

Absu: best set I’ve ever seen from this band. Setlist was The Sun of Tiphareth album + “The Shineth Unto the Cold Cometh” and “Never Blow Out the Eastern Candle,” same as at DTF, but there was just a bit more energy in the air tonight. They followed up with an encore of three Zemial songs, which I enjoyed a lot more than expected; they went surprisingly well with the Absu material, not familiar enough with the originals to say whether they were modified for the occasion or not.

Day Three

Omegavortex: I know I disagree with everyone else here in this band, but this was a killer set. Probably the closest thing to Necrovore live that we’ll ever get — a maze of chromatic riffing delivered at breakneck pace, held together with re-occurring rhythms giving songs shape through the chaos. Absolutely savage set.

Death Strike: efficient! Curious as to how they’re going to differentiate this from the set they’re playing later as Master.

Magnus: not enough songs from I Was Watching My Death, too much generic speed metal. Should have been a lot better.

Soulburn: holy shit boring. Sometime after Bob and Wannes left, they became the dullest droning black metal ever.

Disma: crushing set of ambient murky death metal, like Autopsy crossed with Desecresy. Played a couple of songs from their upcoming album, which were highlights, making excellent usage of their overwhelming textures in a musical way, so that album will he one to look forward to.

Dead Congregation: I wish these guys songwriting skills matches their riff writing skills and energy. They’d completely own the genre if they did. As it is, the randomness makes this fall just short.

Cruciamentum: I wish these guys had a longer set. They laid down the law, with a set of musically erudite and incredibly dark death metal epics, with a setlist spanning their whole discography. These guys get lumped in with the incanticlones a lot, but it’s not really accurate; they’re more like the first generation of dark metal bands, Ceremonium, Belial, early Darkthrone, etc, with a bit of the musical education of middle period Immolation. Amazing set.

Master: Doing a set of Death Strike classics in the afternoon and then a set of modern songs closer to the night’s climax is such a weird decision — it seems like it should be the other way around. Not bad, but the Death Strike set was a lot better.

Mortem: DEATH RULES SUPREME. A perfect musical incarnation of that scene in every horror movie where the idiots summon a demon they have no hope of controlling, supernatural sinister riffs flying in every direction and wild guitar pyrotechnics from beyond all with demonic intent.

Unleashed: Unleashed are refusing to play anything from their early albums, this is getting really dumb with way too much rock posturing. Ended up leaving a few songs into Unleashed when it became clear that they were just going to play new songs and tediously try to get people to sing along with the choruses.

Overall, a successful fest! I know the organizer is saying this will be the final Metal Threat, but I hope he reconsiders, both editions of this fest that I attended were great.

Tags: absu, adorior, ares kingdom, Arghoslent, communion, crucifier, death strike, demoncy, diocletian, graveland, infernal war, Inquisition, invocation spells, magnus, master, Necrovore, necrowretch, omegavortex, sadistic intent, usurper, weregoat