The Last.fm playlist is supposedly what’s played around the Last.fm HQ in London, UK. This week they must have had a metal intern or something. Look at the regular sort of music they listen to, the Top Tracks, the artists in the library  and then look at this week’s top artists.

If Last.fm lasts a thousand years, men will still say “This was their finest hour”.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Nile AND Immolation live, in concert, together. It was an evening of untrammeled brutality and ferocity, easily the best tour of the year so far. I know, I know, the year is only 28 days old.

We got to the venue, El Corazon in Seattle, around 7.30. A smallish venue, but it held enough souls to make the experience enjoyable. I bought a Nile t-shirt, as well as an Immolation t-shirt from Ross himself. The man is funny, and has a hell of a roar.

First up was Evangelist, a local Seattle band. I wasn’t too impressed with them, but they were alright for an opening band. They served their purpose by getting the crowd warmed up. The lead singer had a Pharaonic headdress on, ostensibly as homage to Nile. Anyhow, they were soon done their small set and the next band came on.

The next band was The Dreaming Dead and boy, were they great! A fine four-piece from Los Angeles, the lead, rhythm and vocal duties were handled by two ladies, while men handled the skins and basslines. A refreshing change to see more women in the scene and these two could really play. They were tight and impressed everyone there. Their setlist consisted of a few good songs, but sadly I didn’t write them down. However, I do plan on checking some more of their discography out, and you might like them too, if melodic death metal is your cup of tea.

On to Krisiun. Proudly sporting a Schizophrenia t-shirt, the boys from Brazil made short work of a brutal set. Krisiun is another of those bands that produce a wall of sound that is not easily penetrated by casual fans. However, I am just that, so the setlist may be a little incorrect or incomplete. They played:

Combustion Inferno

Wrath

Refusal

Sentenced Morning

Meaning of Terror

During the set, the drummer had some troubles with his set, and we were treated to some flashy guitar wanking courtesy of the lead axeman, who distracted us from the ineptitude of the drum tech. Soon, order was restored, more invectives were hurled, the brotherhood of metal was saluted and the thrash train from Brazil was back on the tracks. After their blistering set, which set the crowd a’moshing, we had the the mighty Immolation take the stage. They were greeted as heroes and launched into their only-too-short set. We were treated to:

Passion Kill

The Devil I Know (? Not sure about this one)

The Purge (new song off upcoming Majesty and Decay album!)

Den of Thieves

Burial Ground

World Agony

Immolation is a band I’ve never seen before and they did not disappoint. I wish they’d played songs with more groove, but one cannot have everything. I’m a fan of their devastating time-shifts which are brutally graceful. Let’s face it, their rhythm section is like a panzer ballet and while obliterating everything in its path, is yet catchy enough to hum in the shower. Maybe next time, with a longer set, Immolation will grace us with a few more songs. The t-shirt I bought:

That’s right kiddies. Can you hear us, Death to Jesus. A firm stand against theistic satanism, as my friend Geoff put it.

The chronometer ticked away, it was nigh 10 PM and the one and only Nile took the stage. A sterling intro set the stage for what was coming. We see metal bands covering classical pieces all the time, but they either speed it up or ruin it with their vocals, but in this case, Nile nailed the cover of Holst’s Mars, the Bringer of War. Without further ado, here’s the set that killed The Heart:

Rameses, the Bringer of War

Kafir!

Dusk Falls Upon The Temple Of The Serpent On The Mount Of Sunrise

Sacrifice Unto Sebek

Hittite Dung Incantation

Kudurru Maqlu

Serpent Headed Mask

Ithyphallic

Execration Text

Papyrus Containing The Spell To Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is In The Water (easily the longest name of any song I’ve seen live)

Fourth Arra of Dagon

Return to the Underworld

Sarcophagus

Lashed to the Slave Stick

Cast Down the Heretic

Black Seeds of Vengeance

An excellent show, with a very strong finisher. A lot of superb songs off In Their Darkened Shrines, which is my favourite slab o’wax. Execration Text was an unexpected bonus, definitely not a song I expected to see live. I find the title track off Ithyphallic a bit drawn-out, but Papyrus… is a superlative track, one whose chorus had everyone singing along. Who knew that songs about ancient mutterings to escape crocodiles would be so catchy 7000 years after they were written.

If you’ve heard the last 5 minutes of Fourth Arra of Dagon, you know that the ending is anthemic. Simple but effective. Here’s a video of the last minute or so of it, the chanting is superb, we’re treated to some vocal crowd control, courtesy of the boys from South Carolina.

Here’s the other t-shirt I bought. Yes, it’s good to be a metalhead fanboy all over again. Dallas Toler-Wade cut his hair and looks a bit like Uncle Fester, complete with grimaces and all. The overall experience of watching Nile live was excellent. They played Sarcophagus live, which is easily one of their best songs ever, despite being one of the slower ones in their repertoire.

All in all, a great night for brutal death metal and well worth the drive down to Seattle. Here’s to the next show, may it be as good as this one.

Ye gods, what a terrific slab o’ wax!

The new Nile album was released on Nov 3rd and I got it on Nov 6th. After spinning it nonstop from then until now, I feel I’m qualified to write a review.

The album starts with Kafir!, which is Arabic for “Nonbeliever” or “Infidel” or some other quaint concept. An excellent intro riff, with some standard Middle-Eastern sounding chants, juxtaposed with Nile’s typical brutality. The refrain of “There is No God but God” is taken from the Koran and is probably meant to symbolize the Islamic takeover of Egypt. However, this happened thousands of years after the Pharaohs, so the conection is tenuous at best. Either way, the song is a crusher, if historically inaccurate.

Hittite Dung Incantation and Utterances of the Crawling Dead have sinuous main riffs that get your foot tapping. At blistering speeds of 400 mph, the rhythm section weaves like a wounded tiger in the long grass. Great stuff.

The title track is pretty strong, with a fairly typical Nile-esque refrain.

4th Arra of Dagon wins points for the Lovecraftian reference. The ending, starting 5:29 is simple but very effective, easily the catchiest part on the whole album. Where does Karl come up with these riffs?

Permitting…. is the speediest song on an album with no slow parts. Some very fine technical brutal death metal, for you novitiates. A marked contrast to Yezd…., which is all slow drums and meant to be some sort of funeral drum dirge. Melancholy and making full use of those chants again, stuff like this is Nile’s trademark.

Kem Khefa Kheshef is solid, merrilly drilling its way into your brain as it winds its way to completion. Kollias is a monster! The Eye of Ra is another blistering track, none of that soft stuff on this track.

Iskander D’hul Karnon is a very strong finish to a monstrous album. “Alexander in Karnak”? I don’t know, maybe no one does. We have the little hammer off at the end of a riff, followed by a slower part that slowly speeds up and gives us an excellent end to a bodacious album. If the long slide reminds you of Annihilation of the Wicked, well, that’s a good thing, right?

4.5 stars out of 5

Billed as the “Most Extreme Metal Tour of 2009″ and sponsored by such heavies as MetalSucks.net, the Summer Slaughter tour of 2009 was a mix of many things. It was long, from 2 PM to 12 AM, a full 10 hours of death metal goodness. We got to the King Cat theatre in Seattle around 4, missing some of the earlier bands. No great loss.

The first band that we saw and liked was Dying Fetus. They were considerably better than their prior brethren, but still ho-hum in parts. After Dying Fetus was Origin. I had had high hopes for Origin. Often spoken of in the same hushed tones normally reserved for Nile or Decapitated, Origin unfortunately failed to deliver. The drummer definitely showcased his prodigious skill, but it overshadowed all the other instruments. Crappy sound quality ruined what might have been a great performance. It just came across as a giant wall of sound, and not in the good Cryptopsy wall-of-sound way either. Here are two songs I could identify:

• Finite
• Wrath of Vishnu

We had a quick dinner after that and returned for the final four bands, the ones that would make it all worthwhile.

Darkest Hour was up first. Some fairly typical NWOSDM, except 14 years too late. However, the frontman had energy and got the crowd going.

Ensiferum was the odd one out. Dressed in Finnish flag kilts and boasting a stripe of black paint on their faces, they did their sound check in Finnish. They were all shirtless, except for the cute female keyboard player, who was the one person everyone wanted to see shirtless, of course. They rocked through their power-metalesque titled set and were actually quite good live. I forget the song names, but they had the crowd chanting the refrains in Finnish for some songs too, no mean feat.

Finally, around 9, Suffocation took the stage. Frank was in a bad mood and was visibly worked up about the venue. “What the fuck is up with these lights, they’re really gonna make a lose it”, and “The sound quality in this stage is the worst I’ve ever heard. If you think it sounds great, that’s fine, if not, come up here on stage and let me know how it sounds, it fucking sucks from here”. One sterling quote was “You got to see 13 death metal bands tonight for 25 bucks as part of the death metal stimulus package”. Other choice gems include “You know the end of the world is coming. Go out there and get lots of guns and lots of ammo. You know you don’t wanna be the guy sitting down at the breakfast table with only one bullet when the motherfuckers break into your house”. If Frank was serious and not merely facetious, that’s quite disappointing. Needless paranoia is just that, needless! Anyhow, Frank channeled his hate into the setlist, which simply exploded off the stage. The highlight of the night was a full circle pit. Not just the first 4 rows moshed, but the entire venue, something I’ve never seen before. Frank knows how to work up the crowd like no other. Anyway, here’s the setlist:

• Catatonia
• Effigy of the Forgotten
• Blood Oath
• Infecting the Crypts
• Habitual Infamy
• Cataclysmic Purification
• Jesus Wept

A very good setlist, 2 new songs. Of course, I would have loved “Breeding the Spawn” or “Despise the Sun”, but one can’t have everything. I ran up and touched Frank’s hand in the post-show aftermath, a very fanboy thing to do, but the guy’s a metal legend, alright.

After some delays, Necrophagist took the stage. While clearly talented and technically proficient, after Suffocation, it was like staring at the wooden face of Steven Seagal. In their defense, they were late and pressed for time and they professionally went through their set, spitting out track after track of melodic technical death with machine-gun precision. But the crowd control was missing and some people even left during the show. I enjoyed Necrophagist a lot, but they were still second to Suffo’s performance, in my estimation. Muhammad barely spoke to the crowd, just yelling out “Thank you Seattle” and “Here’s $song_name, Seattle” in between songs. Here’s their setlist:

• Stabwound
• Foul Body Autopsy
• The Stillborn One
• Intestinal Incubation
• Diminished to B
• Some new song
• Seven
• Ignominous and Pale
• Only Ash Remains
• Fermented Offal Discharge

A very good setlist, then again, they only have 2 albums, so it was bound to be full of songs from them.

One slightly disappointing issue about the show was the quality of the swag. Most of the tshirts weren’t that great and it was just a big let-down. This is the complete opposite of usually every other show, where you only have 30 bucks and have to decide between 5 killer tees. That being said, I managed to find a decent Suffo tshirt to add to my collection.

As for the non-metal bits of the day, they were great too. It was a balmy 28 degrees, not a cloud in sight and Seattleites were out in force on their Independence Day eve. We saw a bit of Pike Market (a perennial favourite, but horribly crowded), and walked up and down the piers and did the usual touristy stuff: burgers, beer and postcards.

It’s been a while since discovering a new band has given me so much pleasure. When I was a kid, it was Nirvana, then Slayer, then Death, then Morbid Angel…and so on. Now it’s Kronos.

Hailing from France, Kronos is a brutal death metal band that focuses almost exclusively on Greek mythology. If you ever liked reading up on ancient mythologies: Greek, Roman, Indian, Egyptian etc… you’ll love the lyrical themes behind Kronos’ songs. Of course, deciphering the vocals is a different matter altogether. Song names such as “Ouranian Cyclops” and album names such as “The Hellenic Terror” allude to all sorts of Hellenic goodness within. And for the non-mythologically inclined, there are a few traditional DM song titles such as “Suffocate the Ignorant”. Stirring stuff!

These guys put the “brutal” in brutal death metal. It’s on par with some of my favourite bands such as Nile or Cryptopsy. If you like extreme metal, check them out. They simply slay.

But Viren, you’re 27, you should stop listening to this #$@&^#!@ and cut your hair and get a real job.

Death, needs no introduction.

The Philosopher

Lack of Comprehension

Symbolic, live in Los Angeles

The mighty Nile, which is not Egyptian for “lame”.

Execration Text

Sarcophagus, look for the sweet, gentle riff around 3:05

Nasum, Swedish grindcore, political in the vein of good ol’ Napalm Death.

Wrath

Napalm Death, the true masters of political rage themselves.

Silence is Deafening

Nazi Punks Fuck Off, not as good as the studio version but still a lot better than the Dead Kennedys original, in my humble opinion.

listen to extreme metal? This is a question I’ve been asked quite often, of late, sometimes prefaced with ‘You don’t look like a metalhead’, or ‘Really, I would have never guessed!’.

To reply to the first comment, maybe the fact that I look like an unprepossessing banker in the city has something to do with the fact that I don’t look like the typical metalhead.

To answer the question, I must say that I do because it is strangely soothing. It is gloriously cathartic to have someone growl and scream on my behalf while the music rages on. I suppose one has to be able to identify with the basic emotion in death metal. Some might say it’s anger, others power, others yet aggression. Like most forms of art, it becomes a Rorschach for the observer. The listener in this case simple hears whatever they want to hear.

The average person probably gives death metal a wide berth because of the imagery and the undecipherable vocals. These are the two most standard complaints. I like to think that the imagery is just a rock n roll gimmick. After all, no normal person, one would hope, cavorts around in graveyards frolicking in necrophiliac ecstasies with the dead. The imagery is also a refutation to a lot of what mainstream society stands for. The average person does not want to be reminded of the darker side of man all the time. The average person would rather drink beer and discuss last night’s sports game or some other such endeavour.

Before you think I’m trying to conclude that death metal afficionados are evolved humans who can discern between complex philiosophical ideologies while holding discourses on the evils of globalization, let me assure you that this is most certainly not the case. Most metalheads are little better than semi-literate apes who can barely comprehend the writing on the next band poster. One only has to actually go to a death metal concert to see this.

As for the vocals, it’s a bit like classical music. No one listens to classical music, with the exception of Opera, for the vocals and it’s a similar case with extreme metal. The lyrics in most extreme metal songs are complete rubbish anyway.

So, in the end, like most forms of art, it boils down to being a purely subjective matter. If you like heavy rock n roll and want to try something a wee bit heavier, there is always death metal. Otherwise, no harm done.

A whole host of shows are headed our way, don’t miss these if you’re into the same genres of music as me. This promises to be the highlight by far though.

Suffocation / Cryptopsy / Cephalic Carnage / Aborted / With Passion at the Commodore Ballroom
Oct. 18, 2005, Tickets are $37

Another great show should be

Vader / Decapitated / Dew-Scented at Richard’s On Richards
Nov. 16, 2005, Tickets are $28

Tickets are available at Scrape Records, so you have no excuse this time.