The Opera House in Toronto, probably the best venue for Metal shows in the city capping out just short of 1000 attendees is seeing a huge show for the Metal community. Soulfly performing Nailbomb's "Point Blank" front to back for the first time, bringing along weed-fueled Cannabis Corpse, Death Metallers Noisem and Lody Kong.
The night kicked off quick with Lody Kong featuring Max Cavalera's sons Zyon and Igor Cavalera. Not being sure what to expect going into this, it was a nice surprise to hear these kids bringing Sludge/Thrash to the masses. For anyone who's listened to this bands studio stuff, I highly suggest you get out and see these guys live because the studio doesn't do the band the service they deserve. Songs like "Chillin', Killin'" and "Monkeys Always Look" have a whole different level of power to them when the band is on stage and if you couldn't guess being the sons of Max Cavalera, Zyon and Igor as well as guitarist Travis Stone all look so natural on stage at this point, it won't be long till we see this guys as main support to some big tours and some headlining tours as well.
Next up was Noisem, I've seen these guys twice previously in 2013 and 2014 and both times I was entirely unimpressed. While you knew the band was newer to the scene, the music sounded way to sloppy live, I could listen to the studio stuff a bit, but dreaded seeing them live the second time around. Hearing that the and was opening this show, I was ready to show up late and skip their set, but this involved skipping Lody Kong and then this review also wouldn't be happening. Now here's the kicker, somewhere between the last time I saw Noisem and this time, they recruited Ben Anft to take over vocals and bass and this absolutely was a selling point to me. The band now have a much more Death Metal tone, where before they came of as a Grindcore band, they put down their feet and cemented themselves in the music and it shows how much more the band has matured, the music was insanely tight and easily the most impressed I've been with the band ever. Anyone in the same boat as myself, who had seen them previously and was appalled, go see them, this is a whole new Noisem, a Noisem that needs to be heard.
Cannabis Corpse hit the stage fast and hard and I mean this literally because after the second song drummer Josh Hall broke the skin on his snare drum and needed to borrow the snare from Soulfly. At this point everyone in Metal knows Phil "LandPhil" Hall of Iron Reagan/Cannabis Corpse/Municipal Waste, so as LandPhil entered the stage the crowd went wild and was as ready as ever to rock. Supporting their new release "Left Hand Pass" this was the reason a lot of people attended the show tonight, it's been too long since Cannabis Corpse were in Toronto. Playing old favourites like "Blunted At Birth" and "Fucked with Northern Lights" as well as a couple off the new album, the crowd was in awe of Cannabis Corpse, outside of one guy dressed like a priest who responded to LandPhil yelling "Hail Satan" with "fuck Satan and fuck you" even though he was jamming out with the rest of us. The pit was going hard and luckily for the fans, Cannabis Corpse had a good length setlist to appease everyone, at least until they come back.
No one wanted to see Cannabis Corpse close their set, but everyone was stoked to see Soulfly, even if it was performing Nailbomb instead of Soulfly. Seeing the Cavalera's back on stage with their father, Max, was awesome. The only thing that I never noticed about "Point Blank" before was just how many samples there were, samples and the vocals originally done by Alex Newport were handled by Igor Calavera, big sections of a lot of songs were purely sampled which was a little weird to see everyone standing around, the cool part about having Igor handing a large chunk of vocals was getting to see Max move around the stage as a guitarist instead of being stuck in one spot like he normally would be handing full vocal duties. The best thing about this album being played in full is how diverse it is, everything from Hard Rock to Thrash Metal to some Sludge Metal and the pit followed every note religiously. It's hard to say anything bad about the show, going in knowing I was gonna hear "Point Blank" front to back, outside of how many samples there were it was a great experience. I did hear one common thing from people leaving the venue though, the show ended pretty abruptly, if you don't know the album very well, you may not have known when we were at the last track and then everyone bowed and kinda left the stage, no "this is our last song" or anything like that and no encore. A lot of people were hoping even though the album was over the band would come back out and bust out a couple Soulfly songs or something and honestly I agree, it was weird being a Soulfly fan and this being my first time seeing Soulfly and I can't even say I've seen a Soulfly song live. I get it might take away from the experience of the album, but even just busting out a track like "We Sold Our Souls To Metal" from the band's latest album "Archangel" to close out would have made a lot of fans happy.
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