Deicide + Dawn of Azazel + Terrorust @ The Gaelic Club(14/12/06)

Mon 18th Dec, 2006 in Gig Reviews

The black clad hordes were out in force around the Gaelic Club when I arrived, a sure sign that an international metal act were in town. Heading inside, Melbourne’s Terrorust had already got proceedings underway. Featuring several former members of legendary Australian metal act Damaged, Terrorust hammered out a set of brutal and varied material, ranging through death metal to some almost hardcore moments with a definite nod to the old-school, a point hammered home with a vicious cover of Kreator’s Extreme Aggression.

With the club filling up the second act of the night, NZ’s Dawn of Azazel took the stage. These guys have been building a reputation over the last few years as one of Australasia’s most extreme acts, and despite a less than ideal sound they did not disappoint. Bassist/Vocalist Rigel Walshe provides a commanding visual focus for the band, although his stage banter does fall into the realm of cliché at times.

An amusing moment came when his announcement that “We are Dawn of Azazel from New Zealand” drew a chorus of “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi!”from the crowd, which in turn drew a quick “Cut that fucking shit out!” from the tattooed frontman. The band tore through a set of brutal blackened death metal featuring a mixture of older material and tracks from their new album Sedition. For a three piece they certainly manage to hammer out a fearsome racket, delivering their material with the destructive force of a laser-guided missile.

From the moment the soundcheck of Steve Asheim’s kickdrum almost ruptured my eardrum (I happened to be standing right next to the PA at the time) I knew Deicide was going to be brutal. Boasting one of the loudest sounds I’ve heard from the Gaelic Club’s PA, they tore into their set with the classic Dead by Dawn and proceeded to lay waste to all before them. Playing a set which favoured the very old and very new (a lot of material from the classic first two albums as well as from their recently released return to form The Stench of Redemption) the band were in fine form. New guitarists Ralph Santolla and Jack Owen easily filled the shoes of the ousted Hoffman brothers while Steve Asheim’s drumming was both utterly brutal and inhumanly tight.

The focus of the proceedings was of course the infamous frontman, Glen Benton, and the erstwhile “evillest man in Metal” was in top form, his subterranean growls and unearthly shrieks as potent as ever. However while Benton’s musical delivery has lost none of its savagery, as a person he certainly seems to have mellowed with age, coming across as positively jovial and good-humoured with his between song banter, and even declaring towards the end of the night that “life’s too short to be miserable”...a far cry from the man that a decade ago claimed he would commit suicide by the time he reached 33!

Benton did however show a glimpse of his old self whenever a member of the crowd dared to transgress his onstage territory, with more than one overenthusiastic punter copping a swift boot from the frontman as they were hauled off the stage by security, an act that Benton justified to the crowd by saying “Hey, I played football when I was a kid!”.

The capacity crowd certainly got into the spirit of things with an enthusiastic pit forming in front of the stage for most of the set and a couple of keen (or more accurately suicidal) punters even leaping from the Gaelic’s balcony! The band returned for a short encore, finishing on a high with the devastating Sacrificial Suicide and leaving a see of bruised bodies and ringing eardrums in their wake. Sydney has been fortunate in the last year or so with several top-flight death metal acts having graced our shores in that period, and Deicide have certainly added their name to that list. We can only hope that there are plenty more to come. Hail Satan!