Live Review: Unbowed, Decatur, Stolos and Cerbearus at The Boathouse

The Boathouse is nothing show of the Metal hub of Kitchener, Ontario. You would be hardpressed to find a weekend, especially during the winter, that long haired men and women converge on this location to catch some of the best local acts. February 8th was simply jsut another night of this, featuring some of the more frostbitten bands around the area and a couple new bands to the area.

Kicking off the night around 9:30pm, was the debut show from Cerbearus a brand new band who it's kind of hard to place a finger on genre wise. They took on an almost death-thrash style for a good part of the show, along with a more hardcore style. the hardcore side of them was much more prevelent in their original track "Fucked By A Bear", which impressivly got the entire crowd chanting along with the title of the song. Also, in the two covers that Cerbearus did, "Hail Destroyer" originally by Toronto hardcore legends, Cancer Bats and "As Diehard As They Come" by Hatebreed. The latter of which was preformed with "Little Dick" Mike from the local band ULT. The band finished with "Carnivora", featuring Brett MacIntosh of Aepoch doing guest vocals, this was where the band really hit their stride, unfortunately it was the end of the set that they really nailed it, but it definitely left people wanting more. All in all, This wasnt exactly what I expected from a show focused around black metal, but it was enjoyable nonetheless and these guys definitely have a place in the scene.

Next up, making a stop on their Decatour, is Decatur. Decatur brought an old school style of thrash to The Boathouse and showed Kitchener how to rock. Even though it was getting late, these guys would not let up. Playing essentially half of their album Badder Than Brooklyn, I think these guys made a splash. They were wild from beginning to end, especially their bassist. There was no holding them back and they toom full advantage of what little space they ahd on stage. "Internal War" was easily the most aggressive song they had in the set and really set the tone and reason as to why people should not take beer in the pit, because man did it soak the place. This may have been a new band to a lot of people, but the crowd seemed to really get into it from beginning to end, Decatur will definitely be asked to return after a show like this.

New black metaller's Stolos took the stage next. These guys are taking hints and theatrics from the likes of Mayhem and King Diamond and making it work on a small stage. Their stage show kicked off with the band walking out filly robed and laying a sacrifice down on a table, then stabbing her repeatedly. Once he band took their place on stage the show kicked off. Their frontman takes his place behind a podium brandished with the Stolos logo, with his goons all around him. These guys may be rather new to the scene, only having played a handful of shows, but they perform like professionals. Their set mostly consists of orignal tracks, taking their songwriting very seriously, Stolos take on the frostbitten tones of the early black metal bands, like Immortal and Darkthrone. Towards the end of their set, Stolos do a cover of "Deathcrush" from Mayhem, and do it very well. The instrumentals are spot on and luckily, you dont have to hear Maniac's ear piercing screaming vocals. Stolos take hold of the black metal roots and make it their own. Always an enjoyable show.

Last up was our headline band, Guelph's own Unbowed. It's no secret that I have been following these guys for years, considering their last EP Dogma was covered and highly praised when it came out (read that here). This is a band thats developed and chaged a lot over the years, changing gear from a black-death metal band and adding all sorts of influences from symphonic to hardcore. Unbowed focused mostly on their newer songs from their latest album Through Endless Tides, actually opting to not play anything from their first EP or album and only one track from Dogma. The songs on Through Endless Tides hold up well live though, showing the experience and the full scope of Unbowed's influences. Their set kicked off with a new song, a song we should see released on their new release which is most likely coming this year. The song itself was tame, it's a good way to start of their set showing the power this band has without over doing it. It may be breaking midnight, but there was no sign of slowing down. The enxt three songs were all off the latest album, but "Mountaincarver" stands out for it's harmonies and the major shifts in tone in the song. "Mountaincarver" changes from black metal to symphonic metal to so many other thigns, but it never loses its momentum in these shifts. The band showed off another new song, "Anthem Of I" before breaking into the only song of Dogma, "Besieged". "Besieged" is a song that should never leave Unbowed's live rotation, the song itself is everything the band embodies from beginning to end. Unbowed kill it once again and this time on their first show in Kitchener. This is a band that should not be missed live if you have the chance as their ever evolving sound will always keep fans old and new interested.



Top 10 Albums of 2017

               Hello everyone, Welcome to Five Magics Music's top 10 albums from the past year of 2017. With so many great records being released this past year, much like most years, it was a tough decision, but we got there so without any further hesitation here is the top 10 albums from 2017!

10. Slave One – “An Abstract and Metaphorical Approach to Deceit” – Dolorem Records

                This was an incredibly surprising release to me. Death Metal is always kind of touchy when it comes to checking out new bands, there are far too many that follow the same copy and paste formula with a slightly different sound and expect to make it to the size that Cannibal Corpse or Obituary have reached. Slave One though, have a different tone to them. This is a band that knows how to take the formula and shake it up, “An Abstract and Metaphorical Approach to Deceit” deserves it’s spot on this list solely for the balls it took to include a Death Metal cover of Dimmu Borgir’s “Blessings Upon the Throne of Tyranny” which brought a breath of life back to a dormant and momentarily stale band.

check out our review of the album

North American Cover

European Cover

9. Kreator – “Gods of Violence” – Nuclear Blast Records

                I’m sick of hearing “there were no good Thrash metal albums this year” when the year kicked off with probably one of the best Thrash Metal albums out there. Kreator has a little bit of.. let’s say numbness, with song of their past albums, while “Phantom Antichrist” stood as an anthem to me when it came it “Gods of Violence” brought back the extremity and intensity of Kreator for me. Songs like the title track “Gods of Violence” and “Satan Is Real” have become synonymous with the band at this point while the album continues to create more anthems with “Hail to the Hordes”.

8. Warbringer – “Woe to the Vanquished” – Napalm Records

                So again, how were there no good Thrash Metal albums this year? Warbringer dropped this monster “Woe to the Vanquished” and it is straight to the point. The biggest draw I find in Warbringer is the war focused lyrics, war, having always been an interest of mine, it entices me. With some of the most intense Thrash Metal songs you’ll hear this year like “Shellfire” and “Descending Blade” along side the heavier and slower tracks “Spectral Asylum” and the epic “When the Guns Fell Silent” there was just too much to miss on this latest record for any real Thrash Metal fan.


check out our review of the album

7. Astaroth Incarnate – “Omnipotence – The Infinite Darkness” – CDN Records

                Black Metal and Death Metal have always gone hand in hand, but none more than the first EP released from Toronto’s Astraroth Incarnate. Compared to the bands original demo, it is night and day the change in maturity in this band, the vocals sound less demonic as a turn but come out much more frightening in the end and with tracks like “Curse of the Black Plague” blasting you away alongside “Unfleshed” and “Re-Creation” this was a release that should have made it into the collections of any Black Metal band.


check out our review of the album

6. Aborted – “Bathos” – Century Media

                Another EP release, Aborted dropped “Bathos” and fans were stoked, best thing about Aborted is their consistency with music, releasing stuff far more often than most bands do and the quality of the music is always outstanding and nothings shows this better than this release. Consisting solely of two tracks, it’s an EP you can listen to on repeat for hours, there is so much packed into the two songs that thinking about it, it should be an overabundance, but instead comes out as the essential mix of Grindcore and Death Metal that most bands miss the mark on.


check out our review of the album

5. Alestorm - “No Grave But the Sea” – Napalm Records

                The pirate based Power/Folk Metal band are back with another set of tales upon the high sea. “No Grave But the Sea” is simply a whole lot of fun, everyone who knows the band knows they don’t take themselves too seriously, that being said, each of the musicians take the music itself seriously. Tracks like the heavier “Alestorm” which consists mostly of keyboardist Elliot Vernon’s harsh vocals and the softer “Fucked With An Anchor” which, while it sounds like it should have the harsher vocals, is actually more of a ballad, show off that the band cares about the music, the lyrical content itself may be silly but the songs are very well written. As much as some of you may like the most extreme of the extreme, this is the kind of music that’s fun to drink and enjoy yourself to.


Check out our review of the album
Check our our interview with Chris Bowes

4. Trilateral - “Elliptic Orbits” – Independent Release

                Jazz infused Technical Death Metal band Trilateral dropped an incredible album pretty close to the beginning of the year. This twelve track release should be enough for anyone looking for the more Technical side of things to get their rocks off. Songs like “Whalefall” and “Nomad” are the real standouts, pulling the entire things together, the jazz influence comes through incredibly blatantly and it’s actually the real draw the album has, most Tech Death bands hide the more jazzy tone underneath the insanity, but much like Beyond Creation, Trilateral put it upfront on display.


Check out our review of the album

3. Unbowed – "Through Endless Tides" – Independent Release

                This is a band I’ve had a soft spot for ever since I saw them for the first time back in 2014 opening for Battlecross, Unbowed have always been the kind of band to drop an album unlike anything they’ve done before, every single release has become more expansive and intense than what came before it. The original “Unbowed” EP was a Blackened Death Metal release along the vein of Behemoth, then came “Collapse the World” which incorporated a more Melodic side and “Dogma” to infuse it with a bit more of Symphonic element. “Through Endless Tides” is the next heir to the throne for Unbowed infusing a more modern sounds, I hesitate to consider it a “Metalcore” sound, but it’s not completely off the mark. Becoming much more focused on the overall sound and quality, not to say the quality of anything in the past was bad by any means, the focus became the end product this time around instead of what more can be added into the music and much like Metalcore which is a genre that seems to always have incredible production compared to its more extreme counterparts, it made Unbowed’s latest release sound HUGE and gave the band the last push it needed to find the key sound it deserves. Through 4 releases and a lot of hard work on the bands side, “Through Endless Tides” is the end product they deserve and it’s hard to imagine how they’ll step up from here.

2. Carach Angren – Dance and Laugh Amongst the Rotten – Season of Mist Records

                The latest story from Carach Angren is one of the harder ones to follow, not in a bad way. The past releases from Carach Angren have become a little less on the nose with the story they write, “Where the Corpses Sink Forever” was a split up story that crafted an overarching story and “This Is No Fairytale” was one you had to read a little more into for the full story. Carach Angren have figured out how to make more diverse stories and less obvious stories, “Dance and Laugh Amongst the Rotten” follows the trend, based around Ouija boards and possession, you’re introduced to our main antagonist Charlie. Things continue to get strange as we discuss the strange “Blood Queen” and “Pitch Black Box” are outstanding tracks but the album ends on a high note with “Three Times Lightning Strikes”. Carach Angren get better with each release, the struggle is getting gathering the story at this point, it gives the album replay ability, makes it easy to listen to over and over again.

1. Artificial Brain – “Infrared Horizon” – Profound Lore Records

                While these have been in no particular order, Artificial Brain’s “Infrared Horizon” is easily my favourite album of 2017. This monster of a Death Metal album takes you on a Sci-fi journey though the post-apocalypse, I would say it’s a pretty safe bet that the character on the cover would be our narrator. While the music itself may be incredible, that isn’t the stand out factor, that honour is for the lyrics, throughout the album there is a conversation happening, the narrator has dialogue. This is such a unique thing to concept albums and while I’m not 100% sure his classifies as a concept album it already makes me excited for the third album from Artificial Brain.

Unbowed - "Dogma" Review

Let’s start this off with a clean slate; I’m a fan of Unbowed owning both their self-titled EP and “Collapse the World” and having seen them multiple times since I first heard of them. That in mind, I’m a fan of Unbowed and in such will be more critical than a band I have just heard of as I am unable to relate their current releases with past ones. Welcome to “Dogma” the new release from 2 man project Unbowed, Ioan Tetlow and Alex Snape are hard working guys who wrote, recorded and produced this album entirely on their own from my understanding. This means outside of a little assistance in promotion, 2 guys made this entire thing a reality, that’s just bananas to me.

                There are two different tones to this album; the first comes with “The Bleeding Throne” and “Besieged” which are the two songs that sound more Melodic Death Metal with Black Metal sprinkled on top. The former of these two, “The Bleeding Throne,” starts off with an epic build in, a march to war kind of build up, until you hear the riff in the background and all hell breaks loose, if you were making a movie or game involving a huge fight between two clans this is the song you would use. The chorus slows down slightly, which would be the moment you see the king or general stand and realize he will need to fight with his men. The chorus is followed by a mid tempo riff backed with orchestration before slowing down and letting the orchestration take over for a few bars and into a guitar solo that build up the ending of this song perfectly. Once the solo picks up and leads us to the final growl of “I will have my throne” you can really visualize the power of this song and start to build your own story with it and that is proper song writing. After one last pass through of the slow tempo chorus, the song comes to an end and into “Besieged.”

                Now instead of giving away the outline of “Besieged” I’ll let you imagine what it may sound like while I go on to the second half of the EP. “The Fall” and “Echoes of Cernunnos” round out the last two songs and again I’ll be talking about the former here as it was a bit more eyebrow rising to me. The second half is a bit more orchestration driven, and probably some of the most intricate songs I’ve heard from Unbowed. The song begins with a strong Opeth “Ghost Reveries” era sound, and stays fairly consistent with this until about halfway through when the piano solo begins, being backed with an acoustic guitar and clean electric riff and after about a minute, the song gets heavier while still sounding sincere and drawing emotion, which is something a lot of Metal lacks these days, emotion. After a small break the song kicks back in with the original riff (which made me honestly think I had accidentally turned on Opeth), followed by a short solo and once vocals kick in for the last few bars the song breaks into probably the heaviest section of the album.

                To conclude, Unbowed, what the fuck, this is an epic release and is consistent from beginning to end. While the two halves sound like they were written by different people and half different influences in the sound, it comes together incredibly well. If you’re a fan of Behemoth the first half is definitely for you and if you’re a fan of Opeth then the second half is more for you and if you’re a fan of both then the whole thing is for you. Pretty much a long winded way of saying check this out because it’s unique but pays proper homage to the influences.

4.5/5