Photographs by Dale Benvenuto
The headlining of Decibel’s festival this year seems like an obvious choice before you even attend this ear shattering night of band after band. Carcass are a veteran metal group that have delved within a number of genres, mainly gore grind (of which they helped to create) and melodic death metal. Their reunion album Surgical Steel was a phenomenal release, which actually made my list of 2013’s Top 25 Albums, that sounded as though it was released during the band’s heyday. After last night’s concert, it may not be possible for Carcass to even have a heyday. For a band to have been going on for so long, having released mostly significantly outstanding albums, with a reputation so large, Carcass may have found a way to not peak. Jeff Walker, the band’s main lyricist, vocalist and bass player, seems to have worked out how to be a main playing band that never got burned by the spotlight, as he and veteran Carcass musician Bill Steer (guitars and vocals) took the stage with young metal prodigies Daniel Wilding and Ben Ash last night. In short, the concert was as intense as you’d expect, but much more fun than you could have even imagined, partly because of how downright hilarious it was.
As Carcass took the stage, Jeff Walker, donning a new middle aged handlebar mustache, immediately got the show going with a large screen of smog behind him. All 5’4 of him seemed terrifying until five minutes into the show when he began to talk to the crowd (which he did very, very often, and he could have easily done more of). Suddenly his gentle English accent, almost Beatle-like, came out and his dorky sense of humor mixed with his crude language changed the atmosphere of the show entirely. He rambled on about everything and everyone. He called the people sitting at the bar an insult that shall not be repeated, laughed at the guys in the mosh pit for getting their “asses kicked by the women there” and would stop songs mid way to pretend to leave the venue, only to come back and somehow carry on exactly from where the band left off instantly. A highlight of Walker’s jokes was when he literally insulted the work of his own band. He instructed the security guards to “lock the doors!” as they were playing a song off their 1996 album Swansong– their most divided album– implying that people would have left. It’s not unusual for a band to be funny at a show, but for a death metal band to be so consistently side ripping (and not in the way you’d initially imagine) is a lovely surprise.
The performances during the actual songs were terrific as well. Every band member was well on their mark without skipping a beat, especially during extremely technical passages when either Walker or Steer would provide vocals without a note being missed. The guitar players would go crazy on their respective ends as Walker would take command of the middle of the stage, but it never forbid them from coming together to rock out for a killer solo or two. They were an extreme metal band with the stage presence of a glam metal band. The backdrop was a large image of the pale album cover from Surgical Steel which was changed to various colours through cleverly positioned stage lights that would sometimes mask the band as dark silhouettes for a split second. The interesting light show and backdrop combination may have even been a plan b. The concert was moved to the Opera House at the last second as the show was supposed to have been at the Sound Academy. Walker talked to the audience near the beginning of the show, apologizing as there was meant to be a video component to the show. Someone broke one of the pieces of equipment so that portion of the show was impossible to carry through. Walker simply cursed at whoever was in charge, asking if “he thought he was clever” for doing what he did. Nonetheless, it was a mixture of anger with a touch of hilarity, and the end result was a visually stimulating show anyways.
Carcass played a great mixture of songs, containing a lot of material off of Surgical Steel and their magnum opus Heartwork. They played a lot of their most familiar songs, including Carnal Forge and Corporal Jigsore Quandry. It seemed as though they extended a number of their songs for the performance, which was not a problem whatsoever (not when it involves a band that can write some of the best riffs in their genre). Having played for well over an hour (which is a long time considering four bands played between 7 and 11:20 pm), Carcass’s set never slowed down or got tiresome. Their combination of shock, rock and droll made for a fantastic evening. “I’m not a violent person” Jeff Walker told the audience as a slew of surgical tools circled around him on the backdrop behind him. That kind of irony alone could describe this set in a nutshell. As I left the Opera House, donning my fashionable new Carcass beanie, I recalled my earlier expectations of Carcass being a good headlining band because of their place in metal. I left certainly knowing that they have everything necessary to pull off being a great live band regardless of their stature. There’s a reason why a band like Carcass have stuck by me while I have grown out of my high school metalhead phase, and this concert showed me every reason why.
Thanks to Nuclear Blast Records for media access.
