October 3, 2023
Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
Review by: Staicha Kidd
True lovers of metal don’t wait until the weekend to mosh, especially when the legendary Cryptopsy comes to your town on a Tuesday night. A hoard of long hair, heavily patched denim vests, and camo shorts gathering outside of Lee’s Palace could only mean a solid death metal lineup on this unseasonably warm evening.
By 6pm when the doors opened, it was already a great turnout for a weeknight, and as the night went on, the dense and rowdy crowd had you completely forgetting it wasn’t a regular weekend show. After getting a beer I glanced at the merch along the walls and in true death metal fashion every band had about 5 different shirt designs (with Visceral Disgorge’s catching my eye immediately), and the array of gorey artwork and hot sauce was the first sign that you were about to see a solid lineup of brutal death metal.
WARFORGED
These brutalizers from Chicago opened the show, a band that I had never heard before, but who delivered exactly what you would expect with that name, a progressive/death metal sound with fantasy/sci fi themes. The mix of vocals was interesting, delivering both clean and melodic as well as brutal and guttural. While the crowd had not yet fully arrived by this point, they clearly had a devoted fanbase that was ready to give them energy and fist pump through their set.
REAPING ASMODEIA
Hailing from Minnesota, the band entered the stage in matching sleeveless hooded shirts, giving them a true evil aesthetic. My first thought was that this was a purely instrumental three piece band, delivering a mix of thrashy elements to their technical death metal mixed with deathcore breakdowns, but then it was revealed that their singer couldn’t make it over the border. Where most bands may have canceled, Reaping Asmodeia went on anyway and delivered a great energetic set that made you completely forget they were supposed to be a 4-piece. While I would love to see them as a full band, me and the rest of the crowd last night were certainly not let down and were treated to fast, pulverizing technical riffs with an insanely fast, tight drummer.
VISCERAL DISGORGE
Baltimore’s Visceral Disgorge are a collection of pure Brutal Death Metal individuals with everything you expect from the genre. Pulverizing blast beats, brutal mosh riffs, and a frontman with extreme guttural vocals. I have a strong bias here being a big fan of brutal death metal overall, but the riffs were the exact right amount of shred-heavy and technical while still being memorable. The crowd at this point is getting very thick and rowdy and was extremely entertained by the singer’s song intros, which almost entirely involved explaining the weird sex acts the song centered on (these started with being fucked in the ass, then being fucked in the ass by tentacles, then fucking a rotting hole filled with maggots, and finally, fucking dead babies. I cannot make this stuff up). The singer was covered in wicked horror tattoos, so it’s not hard to tell where he draws his lyrical inspiration.
ABYSMAL DAWN
The last band before Cryptopsy was Abysmal Dawn from LA who delivered an incredible, super tight set with great solos from both guitarists. The sound was very full and on point and it was clear why they had such a rowdy and devoted following up front. Their third song ‘Inanimate’ started with a super hard groove riff, and after a few reps of that riff the double bass kicked in and it was a total face-melter.
Following Visceral Disgorge they too also wanted to throw in some sodomy content, so they opened a song with “this is also about being fucked in the ass, BY A HUGE CAPITALIST COCK!” The cheers to that blew the roof off. They then announced “we’re gonna play a fast one” and started playing ‘Mundane Existence’ which was probably the fastest blasting of the night so far. They asked the crowd to give them their best black metal scream, but when the first one didn’t cut it, the request turned to “give me Dani Filth, on helium, getting kicked in the fucking nuts!” The crowd delivered. Their final song had the biggest circle pit of the night up to this point.
CRYPTOPSY
Finally we were treated to Canadian death metal royalty out of Montreal, Cryptopsy. They came out of the gate absolutely crushing to a crowd ready to mosh hard. Legendary drummer Flo Mounier is known for technical and extremely fast, tight drumming, and definitely delivered the fastest drumming of the night on a bill full of bands that all had incredible drummers.
Their set was a mix of new album tracks and old classics, featuring a lot of songs from their classic album None So Vile (which the crowd was very pleased about). This meant tons of ripping solos and tight riffs from Chris Donaldson, and him being the sole live guitar player puts his leads super up front and in your face. Vocalist Matt McGachy is absolutely unreal in his range, his piercing high screams and deep growling with classic death metal yells make for an extremely dynamic sound that you can’t believe is coming out of one person. McGachy also tells the audience that his stage is their stage and to come up and have fun with them, and the crowd was all too happy to deliver. Every few seconds someone new was on stage ready to dive into a heavily moshing crowd.
Finally it is announced that this year is the 30th anniversary of their demo and we got treated to some demo tracks. I know that many of us left that night feeling overwhelmingly lucky to realize that we have been treated to three decades of such a solid classic death metal band, especially one willing to bring us such a brutal lineup of metal on a Tuesday night.
Crytopsy‘s new album As Gomorrah Burns is available now via Nuclear Blast Records.