September 27th, 2023
Toronto, ON @ Rebel
Photos By: Kim Baarda
Words By: Jason Deaville
BLOOD INCANTATION
These guys have got to be one of the hardest working bands in extreme metal these days. This past summer it seemed like they were on every tour and every European festival worth mentioning. That said, it never gets old catching these guys on the live front.
With their brand new Luminescent Bridge 12″ having just dropped, the guys had even more ammo added to their already blood-soaked bullet belts. Kicking things off with the epic ‘Inner Paths (To Outer Space)’ from their much-heralded album Hidden History Of The Human Race, Blood Incantation once again proved how they can turn a non-descript live venue into a swirling vortex of cosmic gases, dust, and interstellar death metal.
With the crowd now lulled into an interdimensional dream-like state, the guys blasted into the absurdly long-winded title of ‘Awakening From The Dream of Existence To The Multidimensional Nature Of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul)’. As the title suggests, the sheer brutality of this nearly twenty-minute song is enough to wake the dead 236,000,000,000,000,000 kilometers away in the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy.
Blood Incantation ended their set with the song ‘Obliquity Of The Epic’ from their previously-mentioned brand new Luminescent Bridge 12″. Not unlike the Big Bang that spawned our universe, this song is epic enough to also spawn its own universe. An awesome performance that set the mood for the rest of the night.
GORGUTS
The addition of Canadian death metal legends Gorguts to this tour was an incredibly smart decision. Judging by the massive lineups at their merch booth, fans came out in droves to catch these guys in action – an occurrence that doesn’t happen very often. The icing on the lime green, gore-encased cake was that the guys played half of their classic ’91 album, Considered Dead (five of the ten tracks, to be exact).
For those unfamiliar with Considered Dead, well, let’s just say it’s one of the most influential albums in the history of death metal, dropping at a time when the sub-genre was just starting to gain a foothold the world over. It’s a brilliant example of that classic early-90s Scott Burns/Morrisound Studios ethos, with just a pinch of the technicality that the band would later become renowned for. If you haven’t ever listened, I highly recommend seeking it out.
As the band tore through ‘Rottenatomy’, ‘Disincarnated’, ‘Bodily Corrupted’, ‘Considered Dead’, and ‘Inoculated Life’, you could literally feel the old-school energy fill the nearly-capacity venue. The songs have aged incredibly well, sounding as fresh and brutal as they did three decades ago.
The gory green ones ended their set with the one non-Considered Dead song of the night. ‘Obscura’ from the ’98 album of the same name. This song, though also brutal, is much more technical in form and was a foreshadowing of what was to come of Gorguts over the next twenty years.
For this scribe, Gorguts easily stole the show. It’s a rare treat when these guys play. A band that should not be missed if they come to your area.
MAYHEM
True Norwegian Black Metal never fails to impress on the live front, and it doesn’t get any more TRVE than the grandaddies of ’em all, Mayhem. Hot off a couple of summer festival appearances, in both Romania and The Netherlands, the guys were in full-on theatrical mode this night, with frontman Attila Csihar the reincarnation of a Viking-era seer (à la The Seer in the Vikings TV series).
Getting things started with ‘Worthless Abominations Destroyed’ from their last album, Daemon (released in 2019), the now-capacity crowd wasted no time getting the sea of bodies up and surfing. At one point, it was body after body after body. I felt sorry for the photographers in the press pit, as they most certainly had to watch their backs for fear of a big black boot landing on their noggins.
Mayhem then launched into a song that I thought I would never hear live, ‘Crystalized Pain In Deconstruction’ from the 2000 album, A Grand Declaration Of War. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible song, but an odd one at that. The militaristic drum march and, at times, Dead Kennedys-ish vocals of then vocalist, Maniac, are wholly unique in the entire catalog of Mayhem recorded material. At first glance, the song seems slightly out of the wheelhouse of current vocalist, Attila. But, the cloaked-one proved me wrong, pulling off an incredible rendition of the song.
This was followed-up with another off the last album, the doom-infused ‘Malum’. This song was a treat, with Attila barking out old-school Mayhem chants, not unlike his performance on the legendary De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The guys then took us all the way back to the criminally-underrated 2004 album Chimera and the song ‘My Death’.
At this point, I was thirsting for more from both the Chimera and Ordo Ad Chao era, but was pleasantly-surprised when they pulled out one of the more recently recorded tracks, ‘Voces Ab Alta’ from the Atavistic Black Disorder / Kommando EP released back in 2021. This song, of all contemporary Mayhem material, is probably the closest thing to De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. The song is goosebump-inducing, with an incredibly eerie and crepuscular vibe that filled the venue with an old-school black metal melancholy.
The band then launched into a triumvirate of songs from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas: ‘Freezing Moon’, ‘Life Eternal’ and the title track. There was no turning back from here. All of us in attendance would either come out of this thing barely clinging to life or with an invigorated love for early 90s Norwegian black metal. Thankfully, for this scribe, it was the latter.
CANNIBAL CORPSE
There is no better time to see the godfathers of all things death metal, Cannibal Corpse, than at the start of a tour run for a brand new album. It’s like the stars aligned tonight in Toronto, as it was only the fifth night of this tour, and their latest album, Chaos Horrific, dropped five days prior. Needless to say, the guys were invigorated and firing on all cylinders tonight.
Cannibal Corpse wasted no time busting out the brutality with the sounds of ‘Scourge Of Iron’ filling the venue. This was then followed-up with the brand new song ‘Blood Blind’ from their destructively precise album, Chaos Horrific. For old-school lovers, particularly lovers of early Corpsegrinder-fronted Cannibal Corpse, the band sliced and diced their way through ‘Disfigured’ from the classic ’96 album, Vile.
Clearly feeling a bit nostalgic, the guys proceeded to pummel the now-frenzied crowd with the title track from their 2009 album, Evisceration Plague. How these guys even put a set-list together at this point is beyond me, as there are just too many worthy songs from which to choose from. It was at this point in the show that Cannibal decided to break out another noob with the song ‘Inhumane Harvest’, the first single from Chaos Horrific.
Kill was the next album to be dug from the Cannibal Corpse vaults, with the chuggy pitriff-ing of ‘Death Walking Terror’, which was immediately followed up with another new one in the title track of Chaos Horrific.
With Corpsegrinder-era material taking up the entirety of the set thus far, it was now time to dive into some Chris Barnes-era goodies. The first song to be featured from this time was fan-favorite ‘I Cum Blood’ from their 1992 classic, Tomb Of The Mutilated. Hoping to hear more Chris Barnes stuff, the band thought otherwise and dived into another new one, ‘Summoned For Sacrifice’. Even though this is a great track, I must admit I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get more super classic Cannibal Corpse stuff at this point in the show. That being said, I knew it wouldn’t be long until faces were smashed with hammers.
Jumping right back into George-fronted stuff, Cannibal pounded out ‘Pounded Into Dust’ from their ’99 album, Bloodthirst, ‘Disposal Of The Body’ from their 1998 album, Gallery Of Suicide, and ‘Pit Of Zombies’ from their ’02 album, Gore Obsessed.
Saving the best for last, CC hit hard with a duo of goodies from the Barnes era, starting with ‘Stripped, Raped And Strangled’ off of their revered 1994 album, The Bleeding. As always, they ended their set with their face-smashing hit, ‘Hammer Smashed Face’.
At this point in their thirty-five year career, Cannibal Corpse can do no wrong on the live front. They are a well-oiled machine of death metal might with no end in sight. Hail the almighty Cannibal!
