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February 2nd 2010, House Of Blues, West Hollywood CA: Ohio deathcore band Rose Funeral opened the show with their short set and the unanimous opinion of the crowd was pretty clear when a guy shouted 'boo!' as soon as they finished the set. They didn't fit this bill at all, and to be completely honest, they should go and open on a deathcore or grindcore tour.

The next band were much better, thankfully, Dreaming Dead from Los Angeles itself. The frontwoman Elizabeth was powerful with her performance and was very well complimented by the guitarist Laura Christine, whom I've also seen playing for the band Meldrum. Gene Hoglan, her Meldrum band mate, was seen in the crowd tonight during Dreaming Dead's set. Laura isn't a permanent member of the band, not yet anyway and is part of it as a touring member as of now. A very good performance and I'm sure we'll see more of them again soon!

Brazilian death metal masters Krisiun were next. They keep improving their live performance with each visit to the city. They didn't fit well at all on the line-up opening for Destruction last year, but were much better with Obituary. And tonight they were great with their brutal, face-melting style of music. I knew plenty of people in the crowd who paid their money just for this band. Although the next two bands were great, I wish that this band got a longer set and a higher spot on the bill. Because of the short amount of allotted time, they couldn't really promote their most recent album Southern Storm as they would have done in a headlining show, playing only 2 songs off of it.

1. Kings of Killing
2. Combustion Inferno
3. Vicious Wrath
4. Vengeance's Revelation
5. Sentenced Morning
6. Hatred Inherit

New Yorkers Immolation got those mosh pits going with full intensity almost as soon as they hit the stage, and never let up until they were done with their set. It was a hard task to match Krisiun but they managed it with ease. The frontman Ross Dolan thanked the crowd for coming out and supporting a real metal show instead of the 'commercial crap', which brought a loud cheer from the fans. The place was really crowded by now and these guys were giving us a great warm up for the headlining act to follow. I had never heard any of their songs. A friend of mine told me before the show that he was sure I would like them, and he was right! Immolation rule! Their brand of death metal was quite unique, with the dissonant sounding guitar duels and the unusual drum patterns. Their new album 'Majesty And Decay' is supposed to come out this year and they said they would be back to promote that one.

Nile hit the stage at close to 11 o' clock to loud roars from an almost-packed House of Blues. They opened with the first track off of the latest album 'Those Whom The Gods Detest', the song called 'Kafir'. I thought they were really tight with their performance of the new songs, but more importantly they mixed it up with some great older tunes as well, which really got the crowd excited. 'Sacrifice Unto Sebek' was the next song followed by another new song. They delighted the old school fans by playing the song 'Serpent Headed Mask' from their debut album. Karl Sanders was a beast both on guitar and vocals and so were his band mates. Their Egyptian influence was quite evident in the next few song titles and of course the music in those songs, 'Ithyphallic', 'Execration Text' and 'Papyrus'. They did just one more new song, '4th Arra Of Dagon'. There were still a few songs left in them and they gave it their all, bouncing off some of that energy into the crowd who were really enjoying this. They picked their last five songs pretty evenly from each of their older albums. Overall, except for the first band, everyone put on a great show and gave the crowd much more than their money's worth, to which the fans gave an equally great response. Here's hoping for more tours like this one.

1. Kafir
2. Sacrifice Unto Sebek
3. Hittite Dung Incantation
4. Serpent Headed Mask
5. Ithyphallic
6. Execration Text
7. Papyrus
8. 4th Arra Of Dagon
9. Permitting The Noble Dead
10. Sacrophagus
11. Lashed To The Slave Stick
12. Cast Down The Heretic
13. Black Seeds Of Vengeance