It’s a cold Thursday night in Manchester and we’re at Club Academy (a 650-capacity venue located in the basement of the University of Manchester Student Union) for OG technical death metal masters Cryptopsy. This tour has been promoted as a celebration of 30 years of their classic sophomore album ‘None So Vile’. However, they are certainly no legacy act; their latest album ‘An Insatiable Violence’ was released last year so there was an expectation to see a fair bit of recent as well as vintage material. Chief support for the tour is 200 Stab Wounds from Cleveland, Ohio. They are preceded by Nashville’s Inferi and Houston’s Corpse Pile, so a very North American feel. It’s a sellout tonight, and rightly so to celebrate an album John the Baptist literally gave his head for!
Tonight’s first two support bands are new to me – so apologies to the initiated and fans of theirs – of which there appears to be quite a few, judging by the many branded t-shirts around me. It’s good to see younger blood and a tour like this must be a good platform for all.
First up are Chat… no sorry, Corpse Pile. Metal does appear to have ‘Piles’ at the moment and, Christ, could this lot tear your arse a fresh hole! Lurching guttural vocals, frequent tempo changes, and a particularly dirty low-end bass give a surprising groove to the sound that I can best describe as ‘Gore-slam’. Everyone loves a beatdown and so there’s plenty of moshing and slam dancing in the crowd right from the get-go. Corpse Pile have already got things off to a wild start! Perennially pissed off, vocalist Jason Frazier declares they’re from the ‘United shithole of America’ – and they’re clearly not proud of it. He proceeds to decry everything from Elon Musk, transphobes, Trump, to even pavements (sorry ‘sidewalks’) or rather Texas’s lack of them. By the end, they could have squeezed another song in without so much talk, but they have a working-class ethos, are proud of it and their passion is to be admired. A raucous and ready crowd gleefully cheer on closing number ‘Us vs Them’ – with those new to the party (such as me) suitably impressed.
Next are Inferi, who whilst still within the death metal genre, present a wildly different sound, exemplified no better then set opener ‘The Promethean Kings’. It’s immediately ambitious stuff with frenetic riffs, unrelenting drums, and twin screamed / grunted vocals between singer Stevie Boiser and one of the two guitarists Malcolm Pugh. Lead track off their upcoming album of the same name ‘Heaven Wept’ keeps things going and there’s barely room to breathe. Next to Corpse Pile’s angry diatribes, the energy they give off is much more excitable and positive. As Boiser demands the crowd to ‘pick it up’, they oblige with a room-filling circle pit. The pace never lets up, incorporating black metal elements but significant melody as well, with high pitched solos aplenty. I can’t see a bassist on stage, and there’s a fair bit of operatic choruses on backing track, but it fits in pretty seamlessly to give an apocalyptic, end-of-days feel to things. There’s plenty of crowd surfing too and Boiser promptly joins in to end up amongst us in the crowd, and then just like that they’re gone. Phew! I must give a shout out to the sound engineers at this point as the acoustics have been spot on for both acts.
200 Stab Wounds are up next and there’s already a main event feel about the place. More of the crowd have come forward and it really is packed! The set starts with ‘Hands of Eternity’, lead off track from their most recent album ‘Manual Manic Procedures’, and we are off to the races at more than a canter! It’s gore-themed mid to fast paced brutal OSDM, incorporating breakdowns and a thick modern guitar sound. The crowd are going nuts and suddenly space becomes literally, a pressing factor! A criticism of this venue is that there’s nowhere else to really go during a squash pit – as the wide pillars towards the back of the room negate most of the raised space. As such there’s no point moving anywhere, so all I can see are occasional glimpses of guitarist Raymond MacDonald’s bare left nipple, or the odd shot of his face looking like an electrified Kyle Gass! What little I can see is more than made up for by what I can hear – and also what I can feel! There’s a groove to much of what 200 SW do, with hardcore elements mixed in that are reminiscent of Chaos AD-era Sepultura, and it makes the impact of their heavier screaming thrash parts even more impactful when they come back in. It’s everything that’s good about this style of music, and fan favourites ‘Skin Milk’, ‘Tow Rope Around The Throat’, ‘Itty Bitty Pieces’, and set closer ‘Release The Stench’ leave the crowd exhilarated and thirsty for more. And they’ll get it!
Given the gig is a 30 year album anniversary tour, it’s a notably young crowd and I wonder if the relative youth of tonight’s support acts have helped heavily towards the sold-out status. There’s not a huge response to Cryptopsy’s chosen walk-out music – Metallica’s ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ – and I start to wonder if tonight’s headliners may actually fall a bit flat, from a crowd perspective anyway. However – as long standing, almost founding member, Flo Mounier takes his seat behind the drums, the crowd’s roar shows me my fears were totally unfounded. The band bursts into ‘None So Vile’ classic ‘Slit Your Guts’ and a daredevil circle pit immediately opens up. Matt McGachy, lead vocalist since 2007, looks like he’s both stirring a cauldron and conjuring a storm. ‘Manchester, we want to see you’ he cries, and Manchester duly responds with crowd surfers galore. He doesn’t lay it on thick but every growled ‘Oy Oy Oy’ call is gleefully joined in and cheered on.
They include a few songs from Cryptopsy’s wider back catalogue (notably the Blasphemy Made Flesh’s phenomenal ‘Serial Messiah’), and as expected a good number from their latest album but they don’t make it a sales pitch, allowing new material to sit alongside classic cuts without unnecessary attention. ‘Dead Eyes Replete’ is a standout new track with gigantic blast beats from Flo, and dazzling fret work from guitarist Chris Donaldson. There’s not a lot of space on stage, but he and bassist Olivier Pinard do what they can, brooding and stalking into centre stage whenever opportunity allows.
NSV is one of the very best examples of its kind within the genre, and that’s what we’re here to see. ‘Graves of the Fathers’, ‘Phobophile’, and ‘Crown of Horns’ all quench that bloodlust – with the crowd chanting along “I do that rather well, don’t you think?” for the album’s opening moments – famously sampled from ‘The Exorcist III’. They’re not playing the album in its entirety, nor the tracks in order – and if you’ve listened to live version ‘None So Live’, they’re not following that either so there’s a fresh feel to things.
As we draw towards the end Matt declares Manchester has proven itself as one of his top 5 cities to play. I’m sure you tell all the girls that Matt but I’ll take it, and after a quick ‘Orgiastic Disembowelment’ and final song ‘Malicious Needs’, suddenly we’re all done just under the hour mark. Is an hour of unrelenting highly (HIGHLY) technical death metal enough? Probably yes for a band that have sometimes, unfairly, been accused of ‘samey-ness’. Is it a shame not to get more material from some of their other standout albums like ‘…And Then You’ll Beg’ and ‘Whisper Supremacy’? Absolutely!
There’s only so much time in this world however and it’s great to have seen so many quintessential NSV cuts, delivered by true legends that are still capable of churning out A-Grade new material as well.
All in all, it was a brilliant gig, demonstrating a fabulous range of different styles within extreme metal. Go and check all of these acts out if you get the chance. If you don’t fancy that, you could always do as the closing lyrics suggest… ‘Go ahead and run! Run home and cry to Mama!’
Cryptopsy Setlist:
- Slit Your Guts
- Until There’s Nothing Left
- Serial Messiah
- Dead Eyes Replete
- Benedictine Convulsions
- Graves of the Fathers
- Godless Deceiver
- Crown of Horns
- Phobophile
- Orgiastic Disembowelment
- Malicious Needs
Review by David Yarwood / James Meldrum
Pics by Rob Lindesay @rock.the.lens
