The absolute elite of death metal in the New York-style invades the still smoldering ash of Southern California on a chilly Monday night at the HOB, West Hollywood, and you had better believe that I was perfectly willing to lose some sleep to attend this one! The triumvirate of Suffocation, Immolation, and Skinless had never appeared on the same bill, so I eagerly made my way out to the HOB through brutal rush hour traffic to catch the four-band bill, rounded out by thrash metal upstarts, and local heroes, Warbringer.
Metal shows at the HOB run with the precision of a fine watch such that Warbringer started right on time and played a 25-minute or so set consisting of retro thrash from the early to mid-80s with a heavy emphasis on old Exodus and Slayer. Although I gave Warbringer a positive review from their contribution on the “Speed Kills…Again!” compilation a month or so ago, I ended up becoming rapidly bored during their short set. Frankly, I’ve heard all of this before and done better, and I’m doubtful that the current nostalgic mania for twenty- plus year old thrash metal will last much longer (well, maybe). What will likely occur is that one or two bands from this niche will emerge and eke out a career of sorts. The jury is still out on Warbringer, although scoring a recording contract with Century Media is, I suppose, a step in the right direction.
Skinless came up next, opening with their “Planet Of The Apes” sample from the “Trample The Weak, Hurdle the Dead” album leading into “Overlord”. Skinless just smoked through a huge set of gore soaked, crunch laden death metal that immediately got the rapidly filling HOB crowd into a frenzy. A huge pit opened up and did not let up through the set, which included samples galore, gore metal hilarity from vocalist Jason Keyser, desiccated skeletons, and a huge, thick, monstrous sound from the guitar and bass. Keyser proved to be a jovial front man, periodically acting as an emcee with various versions of mosh pit rules, and admonishing younger audience members for not being at home on a school night doing their homework (I should’ve been at home GRADING homework, but that’s another story). In addition, the humor was out in full force with detailed directions on how to walk like a zombie in a mosh pit, complete with an audio sample from the pedophile/ pop star’s “Thriller” video (“It’s all very innocent! We have milk and cookies, and light candles.”) Needless to say, I was thoroughly entertained.

The Intake Club is a strange venue. The back bar looks like a miners social club or a British Legion, albeit an extremely well decorated one and the main venue, which has a capacity of about 400, is a great little place. Kind of like a bigger and more welcoming version of the Rock City Basement, but with a decent sized stage. The only thing missing was an audience. I spoke to one guy that had travelled from Grimsby, but I suspect everyone else was local. And that made it kind of like a night down your local boozer and there was definitely a vibe of "this is my regular night out", rather than the feel of a proper gig. That was accentuated by the opening act, who all of the locals seem to know, particularly as the band never said who they were, which is why we haven't named them here. That's a shame as I thought they were rather good and they deserved a name check. A mixture of Death Metal with a punky vibe and a bit of Maiden thrown in for good measure was the order of the day and the young guitarist to our left was absolutely shit hot. This was a local band for local people, type scenario and it disgusting that a lot of them fucked off, especially when the other bands had travelled a long way to play there. (Steve)
Curiously, there were fewer people to see Man Must Die than there had been for the openers. Guess that goes to show a certain degree of parochialism. Never mind, the people that had bunked off to the bar were definitely the ones who missed out. Glaswegian extreme metal warriors Man Must Die obviously didn’t give a deep-fried Mars bar where such limp-wristed guys had gone, and treated the rest of us to a blistering display of extreme metal that I’d hate to have to categorise, beyond saying that there were elements of death and grind on display.
There was a huge contrast between the energy crackling from the stage and the audience, who were perched rather nervously around the edges of the venue, rather like a pre-teen school disco, all trying not to be the first to get involved and make fools of themselves. It did eventually start getting to the band, who started exhorting us to come on down, but this had little effect.
Man Must Die delivered a storming performance of the “well fuck you lot, we’ll play our best anyway” variety, which led me to finally settle on a description of extremely brutal death. Nice.
Aborted were next to take the stage. Now I have two comments to make: Belgians are strange (they invented chips with mayo) and gore-laden death metal is a strange genre. Put the two together and you get something that’s either going to be plain weird or absolutely brilliant. In Aborted’s case, they were just plain brilliant. I have absolutely no