The Opera House is a venue that Metal fans in Toronto visit a lot, so many shows happen here, for good reason as it's an outstanding venue with great staff. It's Halloween night and Toronto is full of spooky people, but tonight
Cattle Decapitation bring their "
Inhuman Beings" tour through the city with
Revocation,
Full of Hell and
Artificial Brain to show the Death Metaller's in the area how it's done.
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
Like we said, it's Halloween and bands and fans alike are taking advantage of it. Artificial Brain opened up the show and I was stoked to finally see these guys live, their last album "Infrared Horizon" is a Death Metal monster you need to check out, and the band will be playing a handful of songs from both their albums tonight. Paulo Paguntalan took over vocals for the band tonight dressed up as a lovely lady donning a night pink dress and fluttering around stage flirting with the boys at the barricade. His vocals matched the band very well, makes sense why they picked him to fill in tonight, with the only real noticeable difference being his higher growls weren't as well annunciated as Will Smith's but nevertheless the band killed tonight. songs like "Anchored to the Inlayed Arc" and "Worm Harvester" were intense live, and right off the bat the crowd was ready to go with heads banging and the pit spanning a good chunk of the venues floor. After only 5 songs though, the band were done and left for the night, only to be seen again in the crowd all night enjoying the rest of the bands.
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
Full of Hell hit the stage next with their blend of Experimental and Grindcore, the band were all wearing dippers showing off their legs tonight. Full of Hell didn't exactly stick out to me, the music had a lot of samples going on and while I understand the idea of Grindcore is to be fast and intense, the joke of "showed up 20 minutes late to a Grindcore concert, missed the first 3 bands" seemed inherently true. The band even pulled Paulo back on stage for a cover of Napalm Death's world record song "You Suffer" near the end of their show. I can't deny the band has fans, a ton of people were pushing their way through the crowd and into the pit and the pit pretty much hit full size during Full of Hell's set, but personally the band did nothing for me.
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
Luckily, Revocation had the exact opposite effect on me and the band put on an outstanding show. Opening with the 80s Spider-Man Theme playing over the PA Spider-Man aka Dave Davidson entered the stand to introduce the rest of the Avengers before the band stated. Enter stage right Spider-Man, Spider-Man and Spider-Man who made up the entirety of Revocation. After about 5 minutes of joking around, the band broke into "Teratogenesis" and "Communion", the first single from their newest album "Great Is Our Sin", eventually the show was broken up with the Spider-Man Theme coming back and the band's stage hand entering to give Dave a different guitar dressed as a spider. After some joking about Spider-Man, not spider, man, the band continued their set and hit the song most fans were excited to hear, "Empire of the Obscene" the title track from the bands first album. Again later, the theme song came back and enter the band's stage hand as Spider-Woman, who decided afterwards to crowdsurf all the way from the stage to the back of the venue. With "Dismantle the Dictator" came the end of Revocation's set and a huge pit, a lot of crowd surfers and more spider jokes, but it was time fore the band to call it a night, and Spider-Mans exited stage right.
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
Last but not least of the Halloween festivities, our headliner and Death Metal masters, Cattle Decapitation. This is the second time I've managed to make it out to catch these guys and a far larger venue than last time (for all you Toronto locals, last time I saw them was the upstairs of Sneaky Dee's). If I had to guess this will be the bands last outing for their album "The Anthropocene Extinction" which the band played the majority of. Kicking off with fan favourite's "The Carbon Stampede" and "Dead Set On Suicide" the band hit the stage fast, each member outside of Travis Ryan dressed as another animal, Travis Ryan was dressed as the bands mascot, a goat headed creature draped in cloth very similar to the Grim Reaper, which only makes sense. For anyone unaware, the band have a habit of displaying the horrific nature of slaughter houses and animal life on farms being bred for slaughter and depicting humans in the same conditions. None is more obvious than when the band broke into "Not Suitable for Life" which was preceded by "The Burdon of Seven Billion" being played over the PA. The crowd was wild, the pit ate most of the floor and for anyone wanting to avoid it, you would have had to hide at the very far back of the venue, fans were showing the band what they had. Probably my favourite track off the new record and the first single "Manufactured Extinct" came near the end of the set and one thing interesting is the fact that the band has clean vocals in the song where you will see all the fans singing along. Before long though, after a chant for the band to reclaim the stage and "Your Disposal" was presented as our encore, the band called it a night and seeing everyone outside, while no one wanted to see it end, everyone was pleased with the set.
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| Photo Credit: Samantha Carcasole |
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