Reviewed on Saturday June 28
The fact that Melbourne’s Colossvs titled their debut LP Unholy seems to summarise what they are about better than genre semantics ever could. It’s black metal that incorporates elements from its earliest movements and adds a sting in the tail through various contemporary twists and turns. Frontman Lochlan Watt did his best to get the early attendees onside, and they were rewarded with a brief yet worthwhile insight into one of the country’s best up-and-coming heavy acts.
Indeed, the entire opening bill was demonstrative of the current metal climate in this country. This meant, of course, taking the good with the bad – or, more specifically, the Colossvses with the Boris The Blades. From their creepily misogynistic recorded intro to the ugly, caveman-like songs themselves, Boris The Blade are the kind of band that should have never left the alternative club night scene. Neither style nor substance showed their face even once during this cringeworthy half-hour.
Business picked up once again with the arrival of Psycroptic, who manage to prove time and time again they are among the top tier of metal both on and off the mainland. After hiccupping slightly with some drum issues after the first song, the quartet blazed through a selection of their furious, fiery blend of old-school thrash and technical death metal from across their 15-year-plus discography. Let the record show that Psycroptic can outplay, outclass and outgun more or less any other band of the heavy persuasion out there right now – hell, why stop at Australia?
It’s almost unfair to consider The Black Dahlia Murder to be also-rans in the grand scheme of American heavy metal. Theirs is a name that has always hovered below the top of festival bills and yet they’ve never had a proper breakthrough in the way that some of their peers have. At least, if tonight’s proceedings were any indication, there’s still a degree of interest around the band, with over a decade of experience and more than half-a-dozen albums under their belt.
The all-ages crowd was incredibly responsive from the get-go, particularly to vocalist Trevor Strnad, who has enough goofy charm to crack a smile on even the most intense of metalheads. Although the constant calls for chanting along with the songs grew a little tiresome, and the hour-and-a-bit felt just a little much, this was still an enjoyable enough performance from an act that has perhaps been overlooked for too long.
