SHOW REVIEW: SEPULTURA, DESTRUCTION, ARSIS, BORIS THE BLADE, MICAWBER

 Concert Reviews  9 Responses »
Jun 012015
 

 

(In this post our man DGR reviews a Sacramento performance by Sepultura, Destruction, Arsis, Boris the Blade, and Micawber.)

Two shows in two days can sometimes be a difficult prospect, especially when you’re used to working those evenings. When you’ve barely recovered from one, dragging yourself to another can feel like a herculean labor. You don’t have the ‘holy shit I’m here’ adrenaline of being at a festival, it’s just two separate events on two different days, and as it would turn out, on two fairly different scales.

The previous night before this show, I wind up seeing Anaal Nathrakh in a venue the size of a fairly large kitchen (that show reviewed here), and this time I was slated to see Sepultura at Ace Of Spades — a venue that I have lavished many loving words over, mostly in hopes that they keep booking metal shows because they have a knack for bringing bands that normally wouldn’t roll through to Sacramento. Of course, you have to keep in mind that this show was a fairly large cultural icon at this point, with both Sepultura and Destruction being long-running international bands at about thirty years a piece. Hell, this was a Sepultura thirty-year anniversary tour, all things considered. (While we’re on the subject, Boris The Blade turned out to be from Australia, meaning this was quite the international tour.) Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: BORIS THE BLADE’S “TIDES OF DAMNATION”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  7 Responses »
Nov 052011
 

(Guest writer Austin Slagle-Knauss makes his first NCS appearance with a review of a new EP out of Australia.)

What do you think when you hear “Australian metal band”? First band I think of is Did You Mean Australia (who are not from Australia, but from Cincinatti) followed by Parkway Drive and the lesser known Thy Art is Murder. Well, there’s a new act on the horizon that will rival any of the bands mentioned before: Behold Boris the Blade and their new ep Tides of Damnation.

Think about the name for a moment and you might guess it’s another shitty core band trying to use a cool Snatch reference for a name. But upon my first time hearing them, I was pleasantly kicked in the head with a brutality that I was not expecting.

The band is a 5-piece from Melbourne, Australia, with ex-The Red Shore guitarist Roman Koester, who brings out the big guns, whether delivering a slow, daunting breakdown as in in the instrumental “Wastelands” or the full-on aural assault that is “Like Wolves” (which features guest vocals by CJ McMahon of Thy Art Is Murder).

The band has already made it to Number One on the Australian iTunes metal chart, and with good reason: This band makes you want to fucking devastate anything or anyone that crosses you. (more after the jump . . .) Continue reading »