By Andrew Bansal
May 4th 2014, The Airliner, Los Angeles CA: Finally home from three consecutive North American tours, Los Angeles metal quartet Exmortus headlined a local gig at the Airliner in the Lincoln Heights area, christened ‘The Imperial Metal March’ and put together by local promoters The Rebel Alliance. The date being May 4th, the internet was bombarded with Star Wars-related memes and ‘May the 4th be with you’ greetings, and sure enough, this gig also had an underlying Star Wars theme to it as a few costumes dedicated to the popular franchise could be seen amongst the crowd gathered here. Besides Exmortus, the gig featured seven other promising bands, and by the time doors opened at 8:30, all was in readiness for an entertaining night of local Los Angeles metal.
The eight-band lineup was to be hosted across two stages, one each upstairs and downstairs. To start proceedings, traditional heavy metal quintet Bottom Line took the upstairs stage and it must be said, impressed the crowd with their easily enjoyable throwback to bands such as Iron Maiden and Iced Earth. The guitar harmonies and solos were played excellently and the vocalist did a fine job as well, complemented well by the rhythm section. On a hot LA evening such as this, there is nothing more soothing to the heavy metal soul than Iron Maiden-esque old-school metal, and this Bottom Line set provided that in plenty. At a multi-band show of this nature the attention span of the average audience member is limited, but this band managed to hold everyone for the entirety of their 30 minute-set. They’re still a very new band and will undoubtedly get better in every aspect, but one thing they need to work on the most is their stage presence. They focussed merely on playing their parts right, which was great, but they also need to interact with the crowd on some level. Great start to the show though, and certainly a band to watch out for.
Bottom Line links:
facebook.com/pages/Bottom-Line/158887217649071
Next up on the upstairs stage was Huntington Park-based heavy metal band Sons Of Eli who brought forth a combination of grooves, breakdowns, low-register death metal vocals and guitar melodies through their set and garnered a few circle pits in the process. Their vocalist came across almost like a combination of Travis Ryan (Cattle Decapitation) and Ben Falgoust (Goatwhore), and besides his vocal delivery, he was good with his crowd interaction and purposefully bad jokes. The band overall had a very entertaining disposition and seemed to revel as performers. They’ll be playing a few more local shows in the immediate future, and for extreme metal fans they’re worth seeing live.
Sons Of Eli links:
facebook.com/SonsOfEli
twitter.com/SonsOfEli
instagram.com/Sons_Of_Eli
Next, from the infernal depths of the South Central region of Los Angeles, metal quartet Vile Descent took this stage. Headed by Kevin Angel (ex-Malignant) on vocals/guitar and Lerry ‘Moose’ Ortega (ex-Scythe) on guitar, this band consists of musicians that have cut their teeth in the local underground scene for a number of years, and their experience clearly showed through their performance of the music they’ve written to give this new entity the ideal launching pad. Playing a six-song set filled to the brim with a varied blend of thrash, groove, shred and old-school rock elements, they clearly meant business. While each tune sounded killer in its own right and there wasn’t a single dull moment, the instrumental to end the set was my favorite. But the music in general was easy to head-bang to, and bore the true Los Angeles heavy metal spirit. A couple of furious mosh pits broke out during the set, specially during the song ‘Rise Up’, leading to the odd fight or two as a result. As a longtime supporter of the local scene in my favorite city in the entire world, it was a delight to see the return of Moose on stage after a hiatus, and he seems to have found a good group of musicians to jam with. Los Angeles metalheads, be on the lookout for Vile Descent to obliterate a stage near you very soon.
Vile Descent links:
facebook.com/VileDescent
Set List:
01. Rage
02. Arrivals
03. Reality’s A Lie
04. Rise Up
05. We Are Slaves
06. Instrumental
Insentient was supposed to be the second-last band on this main/upstairs stage, but they dropped out from the show at the last minute due to reasons unknown, which was a bit of a disappointment for me as I was most looking forward to seeing them after reading Metal Assault writer Jason Williams’ glowing review of their recent Anaheim performance opening for Kataklysm.
As for the stage downstairs, it was a major disappointment to see most of the bands playing on it suffer from sound issues, specially the first two bands Concrete Sledge and Oriax whose sets were marred by either the guitars buried too deep in the mix, the bass cutting out, or a combination of the two. Tormenter had better sound but the volumes and mix still didn’t do justice to the band’s performance, and they couldn’t quite deliver a show of the level they’re usually able to. So unfortunately I’m not able to write anything positive or negative about any of these three bands in terms of their sets at this show. The only band that was able to make decent use of their set on this stage was Velosity, who perhaps benefitted hugely from being just a three-piece, which meant less instruments to dial and mix together. They simply get tighter as a group every time they play, as was evident from the excellent show they put forth here. But I wish all of these bands got to play the upstairs stage because the sound up there and the size of the room was absolutely ideal for a show of this nature. I’d go as far as saying that this downstairs stage shouldn’t even be used for metal shows because of its sub-par sound quality and awkward angle directly facing the bar, but that’s just my opinion.
So, all that was left for this main stage was the headline act Exmortus, who promptly began their set at 11:15 and treated this crowd with 45 shredtastic minutes of glorious classic metal. I must admit, for all of the year 2013 I was definitely burned out on seeing them play one local show after another much too often, to the extent that I almost lost interest, but ever since they got signed to Prosthetic Records, released the new album ‘Slave To The Sword’ and became a full-fledged touring band, they’ve certainly found a new lease of life and undergone an astronomical improvement in their musicianship as well as live performance skills. I hadn’t seen them do a local headline show like this in quite a while, and I have to say, this is the most I’ve enjoyed Exmortus in a long, long time. Their set had a perfect sense of flow to it, comprising just the right amount of hooks and slower grooves to go with the rapid-fire shred guitar parts, and definitely didn’t come across as one-dimensional by any means. Through compellingly solid songs like ‘Metal Is King’, ‘Slave To The Sword’ and ‘Foe Hammer’, they built up the set beautifully to arrive at the Beethoven cover, and as a result, the neo-classical noodling in their rendition of ‘Moonlight Sonata’ was enjoyable even for someone like me who’s almost entirely over that genre. But following that, they brought back the hooks and ended the nine-song set with a fantastic version of Judas Priest’s ‘Freewheel Burning’ that got the old-schoolers pumped and singing along. It’s not the easiest Priest song to pull off live and far from an obvious choice as a cover, but kudos to Exmortus for making that choice and doing a great job with it. Along with bands like Holy Grail, Night Demon, Gypsyhawk and Legal Tender, Exmortus are now clearly at a point where they can do the Los Angeles metal scene proud.
All in all, it was a fun evening for everyone in attendance. In all honesty, the band lineup was well-chosen, and the turnout looked satisfactorily good from the bands’ and promoters’ point of view. The LA scene would benefit from more such shows and the continuing hard work from these promoters.
Exmortus links:
facebook.com/ExmortusOfficial
twitter.com/ExmortusBand
instagram.com/Exmortus_Official
Set List:
01. Metal Is King
02. Slave To The Sword
03. Immortality Made Flesh
04. Foe Hammer
05. Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven cover)
06. Warriors Of The Night
07. Rising
08. Triumph By Fire
09. Freewheel Burning (Judas Priest cover)
The Airliner links:
TheAirlinerLA.com
facebook.com/pages/The-Airliner-Nightclub/397291803677856