CHAOS A.D.
This was another trek from work directly to the venue, House of Blues Anaheim, where I had gone the previous year to see Hanabie on their co-headline tour with Kim Dracula. While I was incredibly excited for the evening, I was also a bit anxious because the sound mix of the aforementioned concert had left a lot to be desired. Fortunately, the FOH mixers of this evening would prove that anxiety baseless. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
Thrown Into Exile opened for Cavalera the last time I saw them, with a different singer. As I would later learn from another photographer, she was filling in while frontman Evan Seidlitz was out sick. I never managed to catch her name (even after extensive online digging), but she had some brutal pipes. These guys are a decent group, but there’s something missing, and I can’t quite figure out what it is.
Genocide Pact are crunchy, sludgey, loud as fuck death metal from DC. So fuckin loud i was wondering if the bass distortion was simply from the amp overloading itself. The crowd seemed to like them, and they definitely had some good riffs, but overall, every song kind of blended together. That doesn’t say anything about their enthusiasm as performers, and I feel like they have plenty of room to grow.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Prong because I’d never heard them (despite the fact that they’ve been around for quite some time), but I was digging their blend of thrash and hard rock. They have a distinct sound that evokes the 90s when hard rock, metal, punk, and psychedelia all converged. It’s very different from the first two bands and, honestly, pretty refreshing. This tour marks 31 years since the release of their album Cleansing.
Not really sure why I never got into Fear Factory, but for whatever reason, I didn’t. They’re touring a retrospective of (mostly) Demanufacture. Good guys though, they stopped midway through the 5th song to make sure some people didn’t get hurt in the pit, which is always good to see. The new singer, Milo Silvestro, pulls off the sound that people come to expect following the departure of longtime vocalist Burton C. Bell.
To say I have been anticipating this show might be an understatement. Ever since 2023, when Max teased Chaos AD for the next Cavalera tour, I have been frothing at the mouth for it. Let me tell you, dear readers, it lived up to all my expectations. High octane, fast, and loud. The Cavalera’s fucking brought it. The stage was done up to harken to the iconic album artwork, complete with a large, slowly rotating sculpture of the upside-down down wrapped-up body.
The band is quite a family affair with the brothers Max and Igor sharing the stage with Igor Amadeus (Go Ahead And Die, Max’s Son) on bass and Lead Guitarist Travis Stone (Pig Destroyer). Let me tell you, they nail those old tunes with a fresh ferocity that really cements just how special these concerts have been over the last few years. They even pulled out some rare songs that had been recorded during the original studio sessions like covers of Black Sabbath’s “Symptom of the Universe” and Titas’ “Policia”, and even live performing “Chaos B.C.”
It’s hard to put into words the elation that I felt throughout the performance. I mentioned earlier that Chaos AD is a pretty important album to me because I not only discovered it during my formative years as a teenager, but it has stuck with me throughout my life. There are many times that I find myself driving to or from work and just think, or sometimes say aloud, “I want to listen to Chaos AD.” I’ve never seen Sepultura, and given the present circumstances, I never will, but getting to see the two founding brothers of that band performing my favorite of their albums was quite simply exalting. Thank you Max and Igor for doing this.
