The coming to Australia for the first time of Cephalic Carnage and for the second time for the Black Dahlia Murder was long awaited by many. Yet in Adelaide the turn-out was far from what I expected. Not much of a line-up before the doors opened; a crowd that grew a bit, but not a great deal.
So many old-school Adelaide metalheads who bang on (pardon the pun) about how great Cephalic is and how awesome it would be to see them, just didn’t turn up. Local purveyors of brutal metal talked up the Black Dahlia Murder to those who hadn’t heard them but who were convinced (from their name) that they were an emo metal-core band, to no avail. It makes me wonder why so many didn’t show up. Partly, no doubt, it was the cost — anything above ten dollars is begrudged by metalheads in this town, and for multiple big-name bands in a year and Christmas around a corner, they’re probably all at home counting their pennies. Partly, also, I suspect it was the support bands, which mostly appeal to the younger set and rarely appeal to most of the long-term die-hards in the scene.
That said, it was an all-ages show, and a lot of kids did turn up. Gradually, it seems, kids are getting a taste for more and more brutal metal, which is great for the longevity of the scene in this town.
But back to the action!
The first support was the Rivalry, who presented us with a set that tended to bounce right out of the band, rather than be played by them. The energy that this band maintains is outstanding, and they play well and hard. It’s honestly not my cup of tea — I tend to find the incessant, rough hardcore yell boring, in all honesty, though the tall skinny dark-haired dude has a deeper growl that is pretty good and will probably develop into something much more worthy given a bit of time. That said, the young kids get into it, and even if you don’t much like what the band produces, they play well, and their energy is nothing if not infectious.
The second support was another local act, Five Star Prison Cell or, as some call them, Five Star Patton Cult. The reason why this band are branded as such? A general perception that they are trying desperately to be just like Mr Bungle, and a general feeling that the vocalist would like to be Mike Patton’s Mini Me. No disrespect to the band, though, what they played was pretty good; and for a show like Cephalic Carnage they were probably a reasonable choice. Five Star Prison Cell are a bit of a bitsa band: bitsa this, bitsa that. They play a bit of grind, a bit of hardcore, a bit of everything. And they make it work, which is probably more important.
But the band that I’d been waiting to see was Cephalic Carnage, who were up next. An older band, they didn’t display the same boundless energy of the younger bands, but they played a fucking brutal set. As might be expected, Cephalic played quite a bit of material from their most recent release Xenosapien, and from some past releases. And, what was even more surprising was the crowd: a sea of young kids banging their heads, old-style. As seems to be a problem with the scheduling of gigs like this, the second-to-last band—a headlining act—never seem to be able to play as long a set as the final band, and this was a real shame with Cephalic. The set wasn’t half as long as what some of us expected and, also a problem with playing second-to-last: no encores. Still, they were brutal, engaging, and out there. And that’s what we all wanted.
Vocalist Leonard Leal lauded us as being Australia’s ‘Weed Capital of Australia,’ but that was the thing that was missing! The weed! It couldn’t be smoked with impunity because of the goddamn no-smoking-in-venues laws (the tobacco would hide the smell, of course)! Why couldn’t they have played here prior to the 1st of November?!
But, Cephalic were full of surprises, not the least of which was their donning of corpse-painted masks for one track, which had many of us pissing ourselves laughing on the one hand, and congratulating them for such an excellent item on the other. Black metal bands could learn much from this!
The final band for the night, the Black Dahlia Murder, were a surprise to me: these young blokes don the kind of beards that make ‘em look like they smoke too much weed, drink too much beer, and play too much Dungeons and Dragons. But they play some really brutal, intense metal. I don’t know their material so I can’t tell you what they played, or what recording(s) it was from. I can only tell you that they played an excellent set that got the crowd going—not in a traditional, moshing style, but in the lets-all-jum-around-and-bash-into-our-mates style. Who cares how they did it: they got into the music and that’s what counts.
This show was really good, well worth the wait! It would have been ideal with a bigger crowd, but you can’t have everything, as the saying goes. Hopefully we’ll get to see Cephalic on our shores again (maybe for a longer set with lots of encores!) and no doubt the Black Dahlia Murder will come back. Many thanks to Soundworks for bringing these bands out to us; let’s hope the next show is just as good.
