Photographs by Dale Benvenuto
The Decibel Magazine Tour of 2014 featured Carcass and The Black Dahlia Murder as the two main acts of the night, so there was only one way to open the show with two bands: By bringing in the old and the new. The night started very quickly with Noisem taking the stage. This young band, formerly known as Necropsy, played a simple no-strings-attached set with one unique catch: Vocalist Tyler Carnes spent the majority of the set on the grown, prowling along the barrier on the floor. It was almost impossible to even see him unless you were right at the front of the pit, unless you caught a glimpse of him marching back and forth through the space between the many heads in front of you.The rest of the band played on stage, which was interesting, as there wasn’t a vocalist dominating the pedestal above the crowd for once. While it was a bit distracting, which may have been the opposite effect of what the band had wanted, the set was still solid and a good way to open the night. It was nice to see a band so young being able to keep up with some gigantic names in the metal industry. As the guitar players played their last note and set their guitars up against their amps, ringing for eternity, a sense of accomplishment could be seen from their faces as they put on their glasses, fixed their hair and called it a night. It isn’t common to see such sincere confidence from an opening act.
Following Noisem, if you were none the wiser, you may have been thrown off when Gorguts took the stage. They set up their own instruments and did their own tune ups and checks. With Luc Lemay, lead singer and guitar player, putting on his glasses not to leave the stage with a sense of comfort but to approach the stage to fixate on fixing the guitar up, those unfamiliar with Gorguts may have easily mistaken him for a roadie. Even the rest of the band, as they tuned their instruments well but in an any-old-how fashion, could seem as though they were with the band and were not the actual band, as Gorguts are one of the most technically proficient death metal bands out there. Suddenly, the band just began to play, and to any new listeners, this very moment may have been the moment that shocked them the most. In came the mathematically ridiculous guitar lines, the roaring anger, and the game shifting rhythms that are more confusing than the plot of Holy Mountain.
Gorguts played a consistent, no-nonsense set that opened the gates of hell, and their gig, the most serious of the night surely, took a large stance. Their contrast to the other bands kept them as a significant part of the night, and their sound quality, that actually enriched the songs and made them better live than on album, could have easily turned the befuddled newcomers into instant diehards. The guitar arpeggios shrieked, the low notes crushed, and everything in between bombarded the crowd. It was nice that Lemay broke his illusion of being a hateful man right before the last song (the band’s staple Obscura, off of the 1998 album of the same name) as he finally addressed the crowed. His scowl was no longer there. Instead, we were greeted with a large grin and a very excited personality. Lemay was just as happy-go-lucky as Carcass’s Jeff Walker and The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad; He just refused to let us think so. We were greeted with a human being of whom had real ecstatic emotions, even after being in the metal industry for thirty years.We were talked to by a person with an honest personality after such robotic and constructed musicianship. If the band members themselves weren’t a surprise for the new listeners, this had to have been one. With a great veteran band pushing the audience as far as they could go and a new band proving that they shall not be left behind opening the show, it is safe to say that many of us had a great time before the night even started.
