FAST. HEAVY. FUCKING. METAL.
As one of the resident heavy music fans of Spinning Platters, it is often equal parts duty and pleasure that guide me from show to show. Duty in the sense that there aren’t many other writers in our humble group that cover punk and metal, pleasure in the sense that I absolutely fucking love it. It also helps that we’ve been in somewhat of a watershed year since 2023, for heavy music, with many bands releasing some of their best music to date, as well as a slough of new bands pushing their way into the lights. Nothing quite embodies that statement like the Chaos and Carnage Tour this year, so it was my absolute pleasure to leave work a bit early to zip on over to Downtown Los Angeles to see one hell of a metal music lineup.
Opening up the whole affair was Face Yourself, a Deathcore group out of New York with monstrous vocals and ultra heavy low end. The first of a seven band evening they set a pretty unrelenting pace for everyone else. According to a cursory internet search, vocalist Yasmin Liverneaux Belkhodja, was unable to attend the tour and vocal duties were carried out by guitarist Corey Doremus, but despite this they performed with great vigor and enthusiasm.
Up next was Vitriol bringing a fat dose of goddamn fast, heavy, and angry death as well as a technical proficiency that rivals a number of tech death bands. Upon stepping up on stage, Guitarist/Vocalist Kyle Rasmussen introduced the bad saying “We are here to play fast fucking death metal.” Damned if they didn’t do exactly that, fast and brutal with a straightforward honesty and a blistering pace. Bassist/vocalist Adam Roethlisberger’s hands are a sight to behold, moving as fast as Les Claypool with equal technical prowess. For being only the second band on the lineup, they left a huge impression and have since been in regular rotation for me on spotify.
Up next was Los Angeles locals, The Zenith Passage, a premier technical death metal outfit, introduced by Vitriol as “a band that will teach you how to play music,” and that was not an overstatement. These guys bring some heavy fuckin death with some incredible jazz inspired compositions that put an end to the argument of death metal as “music.” I can only imagine they’ll be popping up a LOT more in the years to come.
Playing America for the first time, Sweden’s Humanity’s Last Breath brought black metal influences mixed with dgenty low end death metal. Guitarist Buster Odeholm plays a left handed guitar that is strung like a right handed guitar, effectively upside down which has a unique effect on their sound, going sonically places where one might not guess. Their performance feels almost like a ritual preceding some sort of sacrifice. Chanting vocals and/or wailing guitar drones fill the space between every song precipitated by heavy drum and guitar hits. They also won the prize for darkest lighting, as my photos will show, which only served the ritual feeling of their performance more.
Rivers of Nihil is probably the first example of melodic death metal of the evening. A perfect respite from the brutality of the previous bands as well as a great lead into what would follow. These guys are a lot of fun. Incredibly skilled as well as a little silly, they know how to keep the energy going for everyone who’s been here from the start and bless ‘em for it. The unexpected surprise, for me anyway, was an incredible alto saxophone player who showed up in a number of breakdowns throughout the set. Hats off to you sir!
And then, Carnifex came out fucking swinging with some brutally fast, intense, and emotionally fucked deathcore. These guys know that they’re going to dominate and they do so with gusto. Scott Lewis completely works the crowd with all the confidence of a well established vocalist and the band does not falter, meeting his energy with a precision and fury of their own holding equal ground.
Their blend of deathcore and pure death metal gives them an interesting edge against most bands who root themselves firmly in one sub-genre or the other and their more recent work, which took a step away from personal emotion and played with storytelling and horror elements provide a nice change of pace.
Having seen Cattle Decapitation hardly a half a year prior to this evening, there’s not a lot more I can say that wouldn’t sound repetitious. They are, without a doubt, one of the coolest goddamn bands out there. You wouldn’t believe that any time had passed or taken its toll on the band since November. They pulled out all the stops, playing some of their fastest and intense songs along a long and stylistically varied career. If anything, they seemed even tighter than ever, and they blasted the whole place apart.
One note I will make is that the front-of-house sound mixing for the entire evening was markedly better than in November. The Belasco is a difficult venue to mix. It’s an old, super high ceiling building originally designed as a Playhouse. Its natural reverb is a battlefield, and my hat comes off once again to the FOH Mixer(s), who did a damn good job.
