EVILE, TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED & MUTANT
LEEDS RIOS - 26/04/09
For several folk here tonight, this rounds off a full thrashing weekend; with Pitiful Reign on Friday and still the mondo FTA hangover looming from yesterday it seems as though West Yorkshire has truly suffered a UK thrash invasion. While yesterday proved that those who jumped on the red and green thrashwagon when Kerrang! told them to have thrown themselves off and are now searching for the next brightly coloured HGV to board, today says quite the opposite and I was taken somewhat aback by the sheer volume of the crowd here tonight on their first major headlining tour. It’s almost a year since I saw Mutant, and it’s clear over that time this lot have mutated in to a true fucking beast! Taking a dive into the ‘Scrap Brain Zone’ these dudes rage through a set tighter than a nuns you-know-what, and hazardously fast from start to finish. Tonight there is more than a mere spark of enthusiasm from Tom and his cronies; they are simply on fire and rather like the undead in ‘Zombie Holocaust,’ set the place alight. This is all good, clean toxic fun and it’s clear I’m talking about the band as much as the crowd as new bassist Kushner (of Damnas fame) pulls all the right metal shapes and seems to have really gelled with the band over the past few months. ‘The Rauncher,’ dedicated to the ladies in the crowd, comes off with a funky beat for the girls to dance to, though naturally sees more of a pit than any kind of skip round the handbags in the centre. As frontman Tom growls out “this is the best tour ever, man!” I’m inclined to believe if this is the standard for the rest of the evening, he might not be lying.
Now, I must say I was disappointed when Warpath had to pull out of this tour when their guitarist injured his hand, and when Trigger The Bloodshed were announced as their replacement I was hardly doing cartwheels around the room. Try as I might, the whole brutal death metalcore really doesn’t do it for me one bit though I was determined to give them a fair shot. Taking a pop at the economy is a sure fired way to win support from any crowd in the current climate, though as they plunge into ‘The Great Depression’ it’s clear the only deflation here is in the seemingly indifferent crowd. These guys were certainly tight and filled the stage with their commanding tough-guy presence, though for the majority of us near the front there was far more entertainment in the pit as some drunkard passed out spilling his credit cards all over the floor and simply threw horns up at the guy who tried to hand him them back! So amusing, it was, that I even let it slide when he knocked my pint!
Now, Evile have done their best to avoid me in recent times, big rock stars that they are. Having finally scored myself an interview at their London gig with grim bastards Satyricon, Ol selfishly went and broke his jaw pulling out of the tour. I don’t know, the lengths some musicians would go to avoid the press! I guess I can’t complain, as I’ve done my share of avoiding too. Having seen Evile a good 20 times already I found gigging fatigue setting in hearing the same songs many times. Knowing that tonight they would be debuting a couple of new songs I figured it was time I crawled out of the woodwork and saw how my homies are gettin’ down. Thankfully it seems the lead guitarist has recovered nicely, even if his beard has grown back with a split down the centre with Matt (vocals) tactfully nicknaming it vagina. As expected, set staples like ‘Enter The Grave’ and ‘Thrasher’ are received with rapturous appraisal as my camera has a few near misses with stage diving sneakers! ‘First Blood’ is fired out with the force of a rifle and really hits the target, while ‘Demolition’ gives a good indication of what we’re in for with the next album due in summer. Certainly those who were unmoved by the last band had by now come to life and were moshing maniacally in the pit. Perhaps we weren’t packed in quite as tightly as when they supported Exodus, though it can’t be far off and certainly if they played with them now they would blow the stalwarts off stage!
Luci Herbert
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