Category Archives: Concert Reviews

Festivals and concert  reviews and some events Nuclear Abominations has  attended to.

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An unfiltered good night of beer and music

I’m not particularly eager to write these days, but I’ve promised myself to regularly update my blog (no, I won’t say when). If more than twenty-four hours pass, I tend to forget what I wanted to say, so I might as well post right away. Hence, here’s your black metal concert review. You don’t get this many after all-

I was mentioning that it’s been a while since I went out just to enjoy a beer that wasn’t work-related, taking a break from the immense pile of troubles accumulating day by day.

Also, Nuclear Abominations has been a part of my life for almost thirty years but was never really a personal outlet. It represents, more than myself, the part of me that back in 1995 wanted to express something without writing for other publications. I loved that level of bold, unrestrained intimacy so much that I continued to consider myself an active writer, even during months when I wrote nothing. Once a writer, forever a writer. There were times, especially in the early 2000s, when I wrote daily. These days, I find it increasingly difficult to write about music as it seems everything has already been discussed somewhere on social media or a well-organized website in some remote part of social medias. I now treat music as a personal matter, something to discuss with friends or occasionally mention here in these pages. But above all, this fanzine or blogzine, whatever you prefer to call it, showcases a specific persona that isn’t always consistent with my other selves. Nuclear Abominations is the identity I adopt when discussing these topics, and I enjoy using its voice. That said, I still like to write when I get the proper motivation, and this unexpected plunge into the local undergound “scene” somehow stirred something, deep inside of my tiny roid rage brain.

To be clear, sometimes, I don’t even agree with what I write.

Be it War or Death or Black Metal concert review

About last night, I went out to drink some beers and see what’s happening in places where people talk about what used to be underground music—though it hasn’t been underground for at least twenty years, fairly speaking. There was this very young band of guys who are passionate about the genre I call Black Metal, which the rest of the world has perhaps mistakenly lumped in with themes of “War” or “Death” Metal. The evening was Black Metal themed, and although other bands played, I honestly forgot about them after about 60 seconds of listening.

But this band, IGNOBLETH stood out. They are genuinely talented, and my praise extends beyond just stylistic or aesthetic coherence. They show real passion and commitment to the music they create. They talk about music with enthusiasm and ignore the typical social dynamics, much like I did at their age, outliers in a world obsessed with politeness and mutual flattery.

Musically, their influences, including bands like ARCHGOAT, are evident, but they blend their music into an 80% grinding slow mid-tempo with occasional faster blasts making up the remaining 19%. Thankfully, within that last 1%, there is IT, that spark of otherowrldliness streaming from the inside, and I really enjoyed the way that kind of social unease takes the form of horns, chains and rotting corpsepaint. Sporadic incursions of Nordic harmonies sometimes poke in a controlled manner, not enough to lead us onto dangerously slippery shores. They also slow down, ut in a scary DISEMBOWELMENT way, not spleen-infused doom . I think the gem is still rather unrefined and I really hope it stays this way, in a world of controlled bonfires, be the burning nursery.

VomitmantiK/Hellcrash/Goat Vomit Noise/Slaughter Messiah @ Freakout club

I’ve probably never seen as many concerts in a row as I did the last couple of months (at least after 2004), which is especially strange because I’ve also begun to appreciate them again whereas for years the titanic battle between couch and pain in the ass in the car had always ended in favor of the former. To be fair, all the last few concerts I saw had a percentage of interesting bands above 50 percent, and at least something to see on stage in terms of set design and presence. The night of Saturday was among them, with an interesting surprise as well. Usual urban location with a handful of scattered headbangers, a low turnout but unfortunately it was to be expected.

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VomitmantiK

I will not spend many words on the wild and ferocious horde that is VOMITMANTIK because they recently released the CD on the label (allow me an invitation to buy a copy though), except that it was the first time I had seen them live outside of a rehearsal room. The keyword definition here is crude barbarity. VomitmantiK is a rough embryo that draws its strength from being primitive, from that atavistic, primal ferocity that embodies the instincts of the woods, the totemic bloodlust of ferocious beasts that feed on carcasses and entrails. Hammer and nails: simple tools for channeling instinct into massive, direct songs. Powerful and raw, as the genre must be.

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Hellcrash

Here is where the evening took an unpredictable direction. I was imagining yet another Australian-like nostalgia product that might end up on the endless roster of photocopy bands on Iron Bonehead or Unspeakable Axe, but on the contrary, things went in a totally different direction. I had heard a few of their songs on the fly online in the past and was not particularly impressed, even after a quick review in the last few days to see if anything had changed.

Seeing HELLCRASH live, however, has been an entirely different matter. This group rocked the stage to fucking splinters. Even if my infatuation with thrash/speed metal wore off fast around 1992 when the genre had lost that raw polish that made albums by bands like Whiplash, Razor or Rigor Mortis timeless classics that still give me the sudden rush of twenty energy drinks, and honestly never came back despite various more or less pathetic revivals (don’t get me started on Earache bands). Yet, evidently, the magic in the genre is not gone forever because Hellcrash’s set was devastating. The arena that somewhat encapsulates all the obvious influences is Possessed and Venom but within the continuous shredding coexisted instances of Blood Feast, Exciter, Sadus, early Whiplash etc. It’s interesting to witness how simple things always work, at the end of the day you never get tired of eating bread after all. Square and precise, textbook stage presence, studs and leather, a drummer who crashed the skins like a poacher clubbing a baby seal, Becerra/Cronos-esque throaty vocals, spread-legged headbanging, and everything else that could serve the cause. If they pass through your area, don’t miss their show.

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Goat Vomit Noise

GOAT VOMIT NOISE, on the other hand, is a very strange beast. If the first two bands took you into the comfort zone, here we are talking about somebody that manages to put together a unique compositional style even if clearly inspired in spurts by this or that other sound, a bit like what happened in the days of NEFAS, when you knew exactly the language, but could not recognize the words. The concert was airless the whole time, there is not a moment of melody or breathing in the whole set. It’s a bit like walking through some post-apocalyptic, gray, lifeless urban scenery, gasping for some air or fresh water. I had listened to some interesting things online before, but let me say that after witnessing this set I now believe that speaking of Black Metal this is one of the ten most interesting bands we have in this country right now. Having a look at the performance on stage, once again, allowed me to box the view into a whole different perspective. Goat Vomit Noise’s world has no color or hope. It is a finite, bleak black granite wasteland where the only life left is armored and covered with fangs. It is indeed an experience to follow the monolithic, inescapable flow through GVN’s circles of lifeless hell. Excellent.

Slaughter Messiah

I took no pictures of Slaughter Messiah because I left the room halfway through the first song. Uninspired, boring, and derivative second-grade black/thrash with riffs so overcooked and overdone you could grate parmesan on them and cook everything in the oven the day after an hangover. This is the kind of band I was mentioning above, that adds nothing to the music world. Which was doubly weird since they were headliners too. All form, no meat. Nice packaging and merch, but apart from that, there was nothing substantial to sink your teeth into.

Uraniavore Goatphago / VomitVulva / Sadomortuary, the (almost) perfect 2.0 post-pandemic gig

I’ve been working in IT most of my life and I am not extraneous to the concept of hacking which sounds better than “anally drilling out the reasons why some experiences do work while some others fail”. Yesterday’s concert was actually a big win for me and I will try to understand why did it work so well, and ultimately consider if this is the right dimension for post-pandemic shows.

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My old friend Paolo from Coagulated rex bundled the ultimate Black Metal lineup for the night by sewing three top-tier barbwire unholy monstrosities with as much stage presence as infernal sound. Does this ring Black Metal, anyone?

The show was closed to random people, factually restricting the invitations to those actually interested in the show, which was partly a bureaucratic decision but nonetheless a strong message I could relate to, akin to what we did with the Nuclear the Abominations fest 2 years ago. The venue was small and clean, with astoundingly decent toilets, which is something I am graciously obsessed with: THANK you for letting me piss and shit without being hauled in a dimension out of Kapala-Tetragrammacide lyrics minus the aliens. Also, the beer served was quite good and not the usual shitty carbonated dishwasher water you get in bigger venues for ridiculous prices, which is another big thumb up.

On the downside, if I had to find a major flaw in the evening the overall sound was tragically confused. Given the chaotic nature of the music, the result was a giant wall of slurred noise in which basically you couldn’t understand half a shit. Which – at the end of the day – could have been far more tragic if the three bands had not been able to create that kind of suffocating atmosphere of combat shock: the fixed red lights, the stage set, the putrid energy reverberating in the air was really the perfect storm.

So was the shitty sound so much of a problem? Hell NO. Because Black Metal is never about the single riff, it’s about the overall EXPERIENCE. You listen to a Profanatica record, close your eyes and you’re taken to hell. But what about a show? Is it the same as listening to the same record at home? Nope. You go to a show to live some first-person experience and here I am answering myself from the latest grognard posts. Shows like the one I attended yesterday are the reason why shows DO actually still make sense today. It’s not just the music. You get a completely new dimension, like a 4-D cinema when you see something like that. You’re literally submerged in the music, INTO the songs. Eyes, ears, and skin, all harmonically convey the same message. It’s being alive and part of what’s going on in the moment. So no, the sound, shitty as it was, was just a part of the whole.

The second flaw one could point out is that everybody already knew each other, so it was basically a high-school meeting with band shirts. But is that a problem? Did the decision of a private party actually bar anyone from attending? Did id lack in (AH AH AH) “Inclusivity”? Well, you bet it did, ah ah. And you know what? Fuck it! Not because we’re elite, but because selecting dedicated people led to a perfectly balanced night where everyone was accountable for himself and his friends. Which is cool, because it did not really actually bar anybody to come, it just put some first-level funneling into the process. The people that were invited in turn consciously invited other people, there was a first-level connection with at least someone in the show, and I am certain if someone new to this music wanted to attend, nobody would have raised any objections. Despite what one might think, this is an open, welcoming environment, if you’re not a cunt. So no, this second objection doesn’t really work either.

Yesterday’s show was like being catapulted into Jacob’s Ladder under Pervitin.

Uraniavore Goatphago have been the first shock of the horrors of war when adrenaline first hits the brain. VomitVulva were the slaughter in the trenches, where shrapnel made your friends’ limbs fly and covered you in guts. Sadomortuary took the souls of the dead to hell, while the bodies afield were eaten by mutant Armageddon cannibals.

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Uraniavore Goatphago

First time I see the awesome Uraniavore Goatphago and I was blown away bt the sheer static barbarity this duo manages to compress on stage. It’s the kind of brutal primitive violence of late Deranged turned black by the Blasphemachine. Horrific noise wall vibrating destruction.

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VomitVulva

VomitVulva were the perfect choice to jump from the solid berm of the Uraniavore Goatphago directly into the thick of the carnage. The stage was filled with something that looked more like a narcos squad than a group of musicians. A chaotic mass of riffs, profanity, STDs, and shitty booze. This is what you need when you have to tie together the show.

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Sadomortuary

And then, it was Sadomortuary again. The effluvia of the crypt solidified on stage like Ossorio’s blind dead at dawn. If we take away the new hipster nuance of the term “ritualistic”, it would be the right one to describe the interminable minutes of inevitable hooded DEATH that were punctuated by the band that in my opinion best represents Black Metal in this country today.

I don’t have much more to add, I hope that this evening will set a school and that there may be more such evenings. If so, I will gladly go back and get my bloated old ass out of the door.

Archgoat/Black Witchery/Mefitic – May 24th, 2007

I always had a fucking fetish for Archgoat. I cannot really forget the release of their Ep “Angelcunt” in 1991 as it was probably the first time I was victim of a rip off (his name is Paul “Typhon” Thind if you ask – founder of Necropolis records). It was the first time I was deliberately stolen money from a label, plainly and without excuses. Necropolis aptly decided to pocket the International Money Order I sent for some Archgoat (and Demilich) merchandise which was probably never even released. I still have the tags of the post office, I have proofs of what I am saying. I sent the label faxes and letters for 3 years before giving up any hopes. When I started to spread the word about what happened, I was contacted and offended by Raul Varela of Exhumed (he was working for this label at the time) for talking shit about Thind (something like “get out from under my boots”, can’t remember in specific). I had words from a guy called Joker who was working for that label but recently deserted that it was common habit for the label to steal money from the orders during the earlier years. That very year I finally managed to have a reply from Paul himself. He finally promised to send me some stuff to make up for the mess some 6-7 years later, after telling me that he was some “martial arts champion” and that if he wanted he could have also destroyed me by pressing thousands of flyers saying I was a dick. Cool. Today, 10 years later, I still haven’t got anything from Necropolis.

But the point is I was a big Archgoat fan, and still am. I believe their comeback has been the best of 2007. I would have never hoped to see them live one day, but I managed to at last one year ago and their show was fucking killer. They were playing with Black Witchery who too has been a wall of sound, spewing blasphemy in a great show. Italian Mefitic as well has been a cool surprise, an excellent band to open the show.

Here are some pics I took at the concert!