.jpg "Cannibal Corpse Bristol")
After spending a whopping £132 million on the renovation and refurbishment of the venue, many thought it was very brave of the Bristol Music Trust to allow death metal legends Cannibal Corpse to perform in the venue. Their shows have a reputation of being chaos and carnage, but thankfully with a generally well-behaved crowd, the venue hosted an absolutely stacked evening of death and thrash metal.
Opening the show were Belgian death thrashers Schizophrenia. Taking the best parts of death metal and thrash metal and combining them together in a rifftastic killing machine, they recall bands from the late 80’s and early 90’s such as Sadus, Massacre, Solstice and Pestilence. With a stage time of 18:30 the room wasn’t heaving but it was respectfully full, and Schizophrenia unleashed a 30-minute barrage of death thrashing goodness with material taken from their 2022 album Recollections of The Insane and their two EPs. The biggest response came from their cover of Necrophiliac by the mighty Slayer which got a huge circle pit going. Unfortunately, the sound didn’t do the band any very muddy and echoey with the guitars quite buried. The performances, energy and enthusiasm were all there though. Hopefully the next time I see Schizophrenia it will be with a sound mix that demonstrates the full power of the band.
Considering I have been a death metal fan nearly all my adult life, I have somehow continually managed to miss seeing New York death metal veterans Immolation perform live so tonight was the night my Immolation cherry was finally popped. Immolation have been going as long as Cannibal Corpse are a hugely influential and legendary band within death metal, though unlike Cannibal Corpse, this is not a straight up death metal attack but a far more atmospheric, technical, and dissonant take on the genre. There was still plenty of mosh pit action for the band, but this was a set that people observed and absorbed. From the riffs from guitarists Robert Vigna and Alex Bouks which twisted and meandered, the technical drumming onslaught from Steve Shalaty and the thunderous bass and earthshaking roars of Ross Dolan.
With only a short set and eleven albums worth of material, the band did a fine job of mixing latter day material including songs from latest album Acts of God with older fan favourites such as Father, You’re Not a Father, and Into Everlasting Fire. A much-improved sound mix meant that the power of Immolation was fully unleashed onto the Bristol Beacon audience.
It was time for a palette cleanser; after two bands playing very aggressive metal, we swapped for something a bit more on the fun side in the form of Virginia crossover thrashers Municipal Waste. Municipal Waste are still fast and aggressive, but their songs are more humorous with a party theme to them and bring the party Municipal Waste did indeed do.
When they kicked off the set with The Executioner, things just sounded very off, with the thinnest of thin sounds and barely audible drums. Suddenly there were several crew members of stage scrabbling around in a panic trying to fix an obvious issue with the bass and the drums, which thankfully was very quickly rectified, and suddenly the full power of Municipal Waste came booming out of the PA.
Frontman Tony Foresta quickly chided the crowd over having the smallest circle pit of the tour so far, and that rallying cry got all the moshers into action, with chaos ensuing from here-on. The venue security was pushed to their limits with the sheer onslaught of crowd surfers, especially during Wave Of Death, but they had obviously been briefed on what to expect beforehand, and handled the crowd with professionalism and friendliness.
Municipal Waste missed no time and smashed through a whopping 19 songs of thrashing goodness with You’re Cut Off, Headbanger Face Rip and Sadistic Magician ensuring that the whole crowd was hyped up and in that thrash zone. The band finished off with their traditional set closer Born to Party with the band’s motto “Municipal Waste is going to fuck you up” roared back at the band by the crowd. After that blistering set of party thrash, the crowd were indeed fucked up.
There are several things which are certain in life - taxes, death and the fact that a Cannibal Corpse show will be one of the most crushingly heavy things you will witness in your life.
The death metal veterans have been bludgeoning and offending since 1988 and with sixteen albums they have perfected their style of straight up death metal to a fine artform. The band may only have two original members remaining (bassist Alex Webster and drummer Paul Mazurkiewicz) but their whole line up is a who’s who of death metal with the entire band being veterans of the US death metal scene from guitarist Rob Barrett (ex-Solstice, ex-Malevolent Creation) and Erik Rutan (Hate Eternal, ex-Morbid Angel, ex-Ripping Corpse) and they certainly know how to play a death metal show. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher has become a figurehead in death metal known for his fearsome vocals, the thickest neck in metal and just being the most wholesome person in the genre. There were many chants of “respect the neck” from the crowd throughout the show and George showed why his upper body is 90% neck with some of the most insane headbanging and windmilling you can witness and which if emulated will result in the need of a neck brace.
With this being the tour for last year’s Chaos Horrific album, a good chunk of the set was taken from there, as well as some of the band’s later albums especially in the first part of the set. As the set progressed, older songs including Death Walking Terror, Disposal of The Body and Pounded into Dust were fed into the setlist. It was in the latter half that some of the old school tunes arrived, including Fucked with A Knife (dedicated to all the women in attendance), Stripped, Raped and Strangled, and Staring Through the Eyes of The Dead which was played mostly as an instrumental with George disappearing off stage. He returned and finished the song explaining that “when nature calls, it calls” and that in his entire time with the band he has never shit himself on stage!! It appears he certainly came close this evening.
Usually, a Cannibal Corpse show is nothing short of crazy with insane pits and crowd surfers galore but this time the crowd was a bit more subdued having probably worn themselves out during the Municipal Waste set. One more effort saw the audience rouse themselves into lie for set closer and Cannibal Corpse classic Hammer Smashed Face. Once again Cannibal Corpse did not disappoint and I’m sure there were aching bodies, stiff necks and ringing ears across Bristol and South Wales the following morning.
Review by Richard Oliver
Live photos by Mike Evans
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