The Black Dahlia Murder (USA) – Inferno Club – São Paulo, December 12th, 2009
By: Daniel Croce
English version: Maila-Kaarina
Augusta street, dear readers, in São Paulo, is a real Babylon, when you cross it you never know what you will find. It could be anything from gay nightclubs, emo discos and red light bars to nightclubs where we can see small and medium set concerts, such as the Inferno Club where, depending on the attraction, you can find ALL those mentioned things together and mixed. Well, at least at the matinee, at the beginning of the evening on the 12th of December, it was possible to see there emo people with their hair bangs, others wearing hard core t-shirts and not very friendly faces, and some with the headbanger´s look. What in the world could bring so many different human beings to gather at the same small place, with room for only 500 or 600 people?
Metalcore, of course, and in this case, DE ATHCORE.
The audience warming up was a job for the band Buried Yesterday, from Curitiba, Brazil, which plays a standard metalcore with all elements that should be present, except the clean vocals, which means that it's almost a deathcore but not with so many of the common blasting beats we usually find in the extreme death metal. The BPM’s aren't those very fast ones although several elements are there for sure. Those who like the style will most likely enjoy their music with riffs, nice solos and so on. In my opinion, though, their music doesn't show a lot of new stuff, and sometimes this is what makes the difference when we see bands of the same style playing. However, a believe a little more experience will bring it to them because they play very well and their music is good, congratulations!
After a short half an hour set list, Buried Yesterday gave place to Black Dahlia Murder – the band itself was in charge for the sound check showing that when you know what you are doing and enjoy it, nothing else matters – They got on stage already punching faces with two strong jabs straight to the face of those hundreds of listeners at Inferno Club playing “Everything Went Black” from the album “Nocturnal”, 2007, and “Black Valor”, from the next one, “Deflorate”, 2009.
Do you remember the already mentioned gesture on my previews reviews (see Exodus & Kreator), in which the vocalist stretches his pointing finger and turns it clockwise, asking for a moshpit? Well, these things have been quite constant in my life recently...
So, their music is classified as deathcore, but the extreme death metal influences are clear there in a more modern way, following the pattern of bands like Nile and Behemoth. I think that a perfect parallel would be something like: the son of the Swedish At the Gates, because of the standard low C key at the band´s terminal fase (“Terminal Spiritual Disease” and “Slaughter of the Soul”), the doubled harmonies and melodies from the Swedish In Flames are there too but with the brutality and blast beats in up tempo of the Brazilian band Krisiun. So, it's fuckin' heavy, locked up, but since there is tone and harmony it's pleasant to listen to it.
I have to mention the high level of sense of humor the band has, especially the ultra charismatic vocalist Trevor Stmad (would his name be some kind of joke with “Saint mad” XD?), who never stops to encourage the moshpits with gestures and words, always literally pushing, but in an OK way, those who get on stage for stage diving and take time to do it “playing the monkey” on stage. Actually this is a great expression: “playing the monkey”, and it will be really important at the end of this review. His favorite gesture is some kind of “gorilla thing”, punching the chest, and when the song is really heavy or if the tempo formula is 3 or 6, something like a “death waltz”, he conducts the song as a requiem waltz. And yes, he sings a lot!!! Or better saying, urges, rightXD?
In this long circus activity who joins him is the base guitarist and second vocalist Brian Eschbach, equally nice with the audience since there wasn't even a fence separating them from the bangers.
Among other heavy and punchy stuff, hits like “A Vulgar Picture”, “Miasma” (homonyms album), “Necropolis”, “Closed Casket Requiem”, “Funeral Thirst”, and, obviously, their most famous song “Statutory Ape”, which very funny videoclip shows a man wearing a gorilla custom doing...what did I say before, hun? “playing the monkey!” during the video. Even Trevor lamented that the person who “plays the role” of the monkey on live concerts isn´t working with them anymore, but it wasn´t actually a problem cause there was LITERALLY a guy wearing gorilla customs right there, next to me, in the middle of the audience, and he was up the stage several times doing funny things and stage diving - I believe he was very handy when the referred song started out XD.
I wanna make clear that the drummer, Shannon Lucas, who came from the band All That Remains, is really violent on his instrument, he plays fearless encouraging the walls of death and moshpits. The band´s most recent acquisition, guitarist Ryan Knight, is really technical but quite shy, he hardly ever goes to the front of the stage and many times he is joined by the equally technical bass player Ryan “Bart” Williams, who deserves to be mentioned for playing all the time with his fingers, no pick at all (when playing death metal you gotta have the guts to do it). He surely belongs to Cannibal Corpse Alex Webster´s “school”, a real reference to extreme metal bass players.
The concert lasted a little bit over one hour – and I wanna leave here my protest against the little duration of extreme metal concerts, doesn´t matter if they are traditional death metal, extreme or melodic – the audience, as I said before, made of emos, punks and headbangers, looked pretty much OK since, it is a fact, in SÃO PAULO most of the urban tribes NEVER mix or attend the same events. That was great.
The guys of TBDM, once more got very happy by the warm reception they got in less than one and a half year from their last coming. Once more, me and them reinforced that brutal metal and whoopee can walk jumpy hand in hand.
