Thursday, September 13, 2012

Carnival Of Death Show Review!


So I recently was able to attend the first show on the Carnival Of Death tour, which featured the likes of Obituary, Broken Hope, Jungle Rot, and Decrepit Birth. (Encrust was supposed to attend, but van problems prevented them from making it.) I'll start by telling you I had never heard of Broken Hope until this show, and I'm not that into Obituary, so for me this show was all about the two opening acts, who by themselves did a fantastic job with their time slots.




Here's Dave Matrise, being a beast.

The show got started a little later than I expected, the doors opened at 6 and the show didn't really start until close to 8. I'm not sure if this was due to Encrust's absence or if things were planned this way. regardless we got to skip straight to one of my favorite bands on the bill: Jungle Rot. The bar we were in wasn't too large, the stage took up almost the entire right side of the bar and there was about 15 feet of standing room between the bar and the stage, this however is one thing I enjoy about small shows, I was able to get right up to the stage for Jungle Rot and got an excellent view of their performance. The band played a solid seven songs: 'Demon Souls', 'Strangulation Mutilation', 'Their Finest Hour', 'Bloodties', 'Face Down', 'Let Them Die' and 'Worst Case Scenario' which is good mix of songs from a variety of their albums. Each song sounded very good and the band sounds almost exactly the same live as they do on record. Dave did a great job getting people pumped, demanding to see everyone throw up their horns, getting the crowd to chant with a few of  the songs, and getting a solid albeit somewhat small circle pit going, of which I was only involved in once because a pretty huge guy came in and I value my life a bit. Overall I was very pleased with Jungle Rot's set and they did a great job getting the crowd pumped up.

Here if you look closely you can spot a wild Bill Robinson!

Up next was Decrepit Birth, one of the best technical death metal bands in recent years. I had walked away from the stage to go buy some Jungle Rot merch and when I came back I was unable to get as close to the stage. I'm terrible with song titles and I was unfortunately not able to get a good look at their set list, but they did play 'Diminishing Between Worlds' 'Symbiosis' and surprised the crowd with an awesome cover of Death's 'Crystal Mountain'. The crowd was notably more packed for Decrepit Birth and the audience seemed to be a little more alive for this portion of the show, although Bill Robinson did stop a few times to try and get more life and movement from the crowd, succeeding in getting a few circle pits started. When they finished their set of songs Robinson looked out into the crowd and said 'Is that Chuck Schuldinar? Yeah that is. Get up here motherfucker.' And then the band proceeded to play their pretty epic death cover. Overall these guys may have been the highlight of the show for me.

My camera died before Broken Hope took stage, 
so take this picture of Decrepit birth as an apology.

Broken Hope took stage shortly after, and were the first to use stage decorations. I'd never heard of this band before, but they apparently went on an indefinite hiatus in 1999 and this was the first tour they've been on since then, so it was pretty cool to know I was at their first show in almost 14 years. Plus they put on a hell of a show and got the crowd really energized. Like I said, I don't know the band so I didn't recognize any of their songs, but their definitely a band I'm going to have to look up.

After them were the headliners Obituary, a band that I've not given a lot of time to, but I know a little about. these guys were clearly the crowd favorite and the reason most of the people were there. Obituary merch pretty much flooded the room, and they had the largest merch area in the bar. They also had the longest setlist, by a long show, playing a total of sixteen songs (including the two encore pieces.) They weren't my favorite portion of the show, but they did a great job and ended the night off pretty awesomely.

If you can you should definitely try and make it out to see this tour, it's well worth your time!

Here are the remaining  tour dates as of right now:

9/14 – Montreal, QC – Foufounes Electriques
9/15 – Toronto, ON – The Opera House
9/16 – Cleveland, OH – Peabody’s
9/17 – Chicago, IL – Reggie’s Rock Club
9/18 – St. Paul, MN – Station 4 (no Obituary)
9/19 – Winnipeg, MB – Osborne Village Inn
9/20 – Regina, SK – The Exchange
9/21 – Edmonton, AB – Pawn Shop
9/22 – Kelowna, BC – The Level Nightclub
9/23 – Seattle, WA – Studio Seven
9/25 – Reno, NV – The Alley
9/26 – San Francisco, CA – DNA Lounge
9/27 – West Hollywood, CA – Key Club
9/28 – Albuquerque, NM – El Rey Theatre
9/29 – Dallas, TX – Trees
 Bonus Jungle Rot Picture.

If you got this far, thanks for reading!

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