By Andrew Bansal
August 12th 2016, The Novo, Los Angeles CA: The tenth edition of the annual North American extreme metal touring festival Summer Slaughter started off on July 23rd 2016, promising to turn up the heat in already searing temperatures, as always. This time boasting a package headlined by Cannibal Corpse with Nile, After The Burial, Suffocation, Carnifex, Revocation, Krisiun, Slaughter To Prevail, Ingested and Enterprise Earth in support, Summer Slaughter strived to outdo its own previous efforts with what was potentially their most brutal lineup ever on paper. As per the tradition every year, the announcement of the lineup was accompanied by metalheads across the States complaining about their favorite band being too low on the bill, some of them also extremely upset that the tour was not going to visit a venue less than one mile from their house on a weekend. The tour arrived in downtown Los Angeles for a gig at the Novo in the L.A. Live entertainment square, and despite the internet outrage, death metal fanatics turned up early and in good numbers to enjoy this endurance-testing 12-band marathon.
Doors were scheduled to open at 2 PM and a sizable crowd of ticket holders was already in line waiting to enter. There was a delay in opening the doors, and the box office staff were still printing tickets, clearly not ready for this show. In addition to the 10 bands on the Summer Slaughter package, the show also had two winners of ‘Headbang For The Highway’, a battle-of-the-bands event conducted throughout the country to pick local openers for each show on this tour. It is a great opportunity for local unsigned bands, except that their names are never advertised on online event flyers, or on any schedules posted anywhere around the venue, and they enjoy the dignity of being called ‘Local 1’ and ‘Local 2’.
The first of these bands, Hounds Of Tindalos took the stage as soon as the doors opened, and their already short 20-minute set was cut further short to make up for the delay in proceedings. They played a solid set of extreme metal with particularly impressive guitar work. But as it turns out, they’re based out of Mesa, Arizona and are not in fact a local LA band, which begs the question as to why an LA area band wasn’t picked instead. But that’s not to take anything away from Hounds Of Tindalos, and playing the biggest show of their lives, they did everything right.
Next up, Pomona, California Throne Of Tyranny a.k.a. ‘Local 2’ played a set that must have lasted less than 15 minutes, but got the early birds moving with their mix of melodic death metal and deathcore, their tunes mainly filled with fretboard-sweeping guitar parts intertwined with breakdowns. In the middle of the set, the vocalist asked how many in the crowd had seen them before and the answer was absolutely zero, which motivated the band further to put on their best show in front of an entirely new audience. Throne Of Tyranny’s efforts did not go to waste, and quite a few of the attendees would most likely remember the band as one of the early instigators of a day of brutal heavy music.
The deathcore vibes continued, with Spokane, Washington six-piece unit Enterprise Earth hitting the stage as the first of the touring bands under the spotlight, and as the breakdowns flowed unstoppably from the stage, the circle pits intensified, while more and more ticket holders were arriving by the minute and grabbing the first-come-first-serve wristbands to get into the general admission pit area closest to the stage. This band is heavy on breakdowns and not much else, but that’s their thing and they do it well enough for fans of that style to take notice.
Next were Manchester, England quintet Ingested, and they clearly drew some people to this show that were already fans of the band, as evident from some scattered chants of ‘Ingested!’ before they began their set. Their vocalist showcased good strength in vocal delivery as well as stage presence and crowd interaction while his band mates hammered away non-stop for the 20-minute set, and amongst the first five bands to play this show, they were undoubtedly the most impressive.
All the way from Russia, Slaughter To Prevail took the stage next, as the vocalist came out in a mask and performed the first two songs in it, which definitely got the crowd interested. One thing this entire show lacked was the visual aspect, and Slaughter To Prevail, although musically slightly lost in this 12-band shuffle by the time the show ended, undeniably stood out for this visual element, thanks to the mask. Other than that, it was mostly breakdown-laden heavy music, which fans of Ingested and the like were able to appreciate, as told by the long queue alongside their merch table after the set.
In the first half of the show, there wasn’t much to cater to fans of old-school extreme music, except for the one band these people had arrived here early enough to see, Brazilian trio Krisiun. This was by far the first band to take this stage with any kind of classic death metal attack, and they did so with great conviction as they put their best foot forward to encapsulate 26 years and 10 albums of masterful brutality into this 30-minute set. Whilst the previous five bands had support from only some sections of this crowd, Krisiun succeeded in garnering a unified roar from nearly everyone present inside the venue, after every song. Aside from his musicianship, bassist/vocalist Alex Camargo also instilled violence in the crowd with his words, as he repeatedly urged them to make noise and mosh. His bandmates Max and Moyses Kolesne combined excellently with the frontman, and despite being the only three-piece band of this lineup, Krisiun were as powerful as anyone else. This band of brothers is keeping the old-school alive on this otherwise mostly modern extreme metal festival.
In terms of number of bands, the show had reached its halfway point, and through this three-hour duration, some aspects were clearly noticeable. Firstly, chicks were moshing harder than dudes. Secondly, the strobe lighting at the Novo is amongst the most powerful you’d experience at any Los Angeles area venue and they greatly enhanced the impact of the music on offer here. Thirdly, the upstairs balcony was open and seats were available on a general admission basis, even as a large section of it was curtained off and the show only sold enough tickets to fill out all sections of the floor downstairs. The balcony was nothing short of a luxury at a long metal show of this nature, and in case you were winded by hard-hitting moshpits, or finding the strobes too much to handle, or simply bored of the band on stage, you could go upstairs, find a seat and take a comfortable nap. While most people migrated to the bars, merch tables or smoking patio between sets, watching the stage in these intermissions was interesting in itself and the way the roadies pulled off the 10-minute set changes was a work of art. But the most striking negative of the first half of the show was nearly every band’s usage of intro tapes. With set lengths ranging from 20-30 minutes, it was hard to understand why a band would waste precious time standing on stage and waiting for the intro to end. The show had already presented a lot of music, but through Krisiun’s set the fun had only begun, and things were about to get better quick.
Read more on Page 2