Metalcore is a much maligned genre right now but it’s bands like Orchid’s Curse who are going to survive the ‘I’ve heard this before, booooring’ attitudes of today’s music consumer. Simply put, Voices: The Tales of Broken Men is a huge step forward and progression for the band.

“Only in death metal can you seriously announce that the next song is about the secret shadow-dwellers who live underground, have the room nod along seriously and then play a blisteringly brilliant song without a hint of irony. It’s damn fun to play mind-bogglingly intricate, complex music and still assert that the subject matter is inspired by psychic vampires. It is excellent, serious music delivered with charm, humour and monsters — there is nothing not to love.”

Natalie Zed reviews the August 28th Toronto performance by ABORTED, AUGURY and SYSTEM DIVIDE at Sneaky Dee’s. Live photos by Adam Wills.

Mares of Thrace played last on the bill, and brought the night to a thunderous close. I am profoundly interested in the aesthetics of constraint and the way art can be produced by limitation. Mares of Thrace plug directly into this particular obsession. Consisting only of vocals, baritone guitar and drums, this two-woman force of nature produce a wall of sound: intense and varied, deep and resonant, pulsating and urgent, and shockingly complex.

(Heaven’s Venom shows) there are still some new ideas in this Canadian northern hyperblast machine that keeps them at the top of the death metal pack

“Next on the docket was Hamilton’s own Deathmarch. For reasons I’m not fully aware of they were without a drummer tonight, getting by with a drum track and Northern Storm Records label head Rob Cranny. By this I mean that Rob sat in the middle of the stage, shirtless with drum sticks in hand, phantom drumming throughout the entire set. Remember what I said about metal being fun?”

Renee Trotier reviews the August 18th performance by DEATHMARCH, ESOTERIC DOCTRINE, HALLOWS DIE and TWILIGHT CHILD at the Corktown Pub in Hamilton ON.

Natalie Zed reviews the August 6th performance of FATALITY, TERRORHORSE and HALLOWS DIE at the El Mocambo in Toronto, ON

Mares of Thrace are one hell of a lot of fun to watch live and they will blow you away. If the new song they played at Kilroys is any indication (Pale Neck), their next record is also going to be a monster, possibly better than The Moulting but I’m not sure if that could happen.

The fact that the much-ballyhooed debut album by Blood Revolt is generating vehement reactions from the metal world shouldn’t be much of a surprise. And you know it’s the kind of reaction Alberta black metal mainstays C. Ross and James Read wanted when they formed a trans-Atlantic artistic partnership with Primordial proselytizer Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill. One one side, you’ve got underground metal scenesters who can make neither heads nor tails of all that damned singing atop the scorching backdrop of raw black metal provided by the two members of Axis of Advance and Revenge. On the other side are the Primordial fans that are so starved for a new album that they’ll listen to anything Averill lends his voice to. Needless to say, hearing the man contribute to something so unflinching, so confrontational had to have been the last thing they expected. Where are the 6/8 time signatures, dammit!