Napalm Flesh: One Metal Weekend

The weekend of Aug. 20-22 was one filled with metal, as I visited Club Vegas on Friday, the 20th to see Exodus’s March of Brutality tour, and then witnessed the Pentagrammaton tour featuring Enthroned and Destroyer 666 on Sunday at Bar Deluxe. Hopefully some of you metal fiends were at one of these shows at least. If not, you sorely missed some metal madness and mayhem. Reviews for both gigs are included here for your reading pleasure.

I arrived a bit late to Club Vegas, and unfortunately missed local metal crew Killbot. I’m sure I’ll get a chance to see them belt out their metaldom sometime soon. I entered the doors as Pomona, California’s Bonded by Blood were beginning their set, snagged some nice draft PBR and meandered to the back of the club, watching my first new-ish band playing old-school Bay Area thrash metal. The band had the early crowd worked up in a fervor, pumping fists and, surprisingly, singing along. But as a cynic and a critic and a metal fan whose first love of the music was thrash, Bonded by Blood were not just an average band—they were terrible. It truly felt like a fashion show over anything musically good. There was a lot of the typical metal posturing, and the vocalist even air-guitared his mic stand. The band was a raucous showcase of lots of noisy riffs and lousy guitar solos that I’ve heard played so many times before. They had a punk thing going on as well, but I just flat out didn’t get it.

Another new Cali band playing classic-style heavy metal, Holy Grail, hit the stage next in a nice and quick set change over. Holy Grail includes ex members of the much applauded White Wizzard. They had a pretty clean slate for my ears to judge, since I had only heard a couple recorded tracks of theirs. Alas, much like Bonded by Blood’s 80s illusion fashion show, there were plenty of cheesy poses, flying hair, leather and spikes. What sounded promising on record sounded fairly bland in the live setting. It just felt like a emulation of two of the biggest heavy metal bands in existence: Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Nothing stood out from their set. If they came to headline a show in SLC sometime, I’m pretty sure I’d miss it. To add insult to injury post set, the band’s singer proved to be worthy of the douchbag tag, as he offered me an empty glass in a sarcastic and asinine manner as I sat on the curb having a cigarette. I promptly thanked him with profanities, but alas my delivery of said profanities wasn’t loud enough and went unheard.

Encroaching closer towards the stage, I decided to start owning and experiencing the show as Florida’s long standing death metal wrecking crew Malevolent Creation got to blasting. It was exactly what I expected it to be and then some: plenty of death metal grooves as the guitarists, bassist and singer all pulled contorted death metal faces. What they lacked in technicality compared to many death metal bands, they made up for in sheer, pummeling old school death metal force. Vocalist Brett Hoffmann proved fact that if you rip your pants while on tour, you’re pretty much shit out of luck, with a nice hole right in the crotch of his jeans. Thank god he was wearing underwear or I’d have taken many steps back. Malevolent Creation were never high on my list of favorites of American death metal, but they have an extensive catalogue which they pulled from on Friday night. They gave their all and worked the crowd into dismal violence and headbanging. They got me reminiscing about my days as a teen, when mostly American death metal and Florida based death metal were prominent listening pleasures.

On to the main event: Bay Area thrashers Exodus simply owned the stage at Club Vegas. I didn’t have huge expectations going into this show, being pretty ho-hum on the band’s last couple albums, but they purveyed and delivered pure thrash mayhem, inciting the fairly packed club into frenzies of sing a longs, circle pits and a small-yet-devastating “wall of death”—if you don’t know what it is, look it up on youtube. The band grabbed you by the jugular from the very first song of their set and didn’t let go until they were done. They played songs that encompassed all of their lyrical themes: war, killing posers, thrash metal and politics. Current vocalist Rob Dukes had a dominating and commanding stage presence. With a gnarly scar on the left side of his face, his vocal delivery and stage banter only enraged the audience further. The guitars coming from Gary Holt, who was all smiles and pure shred, along with Lee Altus (Heathen/Angelwitch) played off one another’s energy and individual strengths. Drummer Tom Hunting proved his skill maddeningly and awesomely.

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