Marduk, Immolation, Origin, Bio-Cancer
11th of May 2016
The Fleece, Bristol, UK
Text and photos by Dawid Krosnia
FULL PHOTO GALLERY BELOW
Another Marduk European tour, another spectacular line-up. When I’ve seen the poster for the first time, my mouth was drooling from the excitement and hunger for some five hours of one of the most brutal line-ups this year. I’m not going to lie to you, I’ve watched the Swedish quartet at least a dozen of times. Marduk’s hard work and quality of the musicianship is visible in every record as well as the overall stage performance.
First on the stage was the Greek thrashing crew, Bio-Cancer. They are currently still in the promotional circle of the latest offering, Tormenting the Innocent, that was released last year by the Brits from Candlelight Records. I wasn’t familiar with any of their records and I didn’t want to listen to them before the gig as I wanted to leave room for a surprise. I must say, I was gobsmacked. Great energy on the stage, fast and furious riffing with painful thrashing violence is something I was after for a while. The songs were very catchy. It’s not an easy job to be the first to play as usually the attendance for the first band is quite poor. They’ve managed to pull in the great crowd. I couldn’t imagine a better opener for this tour.
Next to hit the stage was the American technical brutal death metal machine, Origin. I don’t know if you had a chance to witness these guys live before but the Metalicious Hurricane had in plans to destroy everything and everyone. No survivors. They’ve started the show with the two first tracks from the previous record, Entity, Explosion of Fury and the excellent Purgatory. I found this bit strange as they’re currently touring the new album called, Omnipresent. Origin managed to play four songs from the new record and a few other tracks. Overall fantastic performance, it’s always a pleasure to see them live. They’ve had quite an interesting career so far, four records under the Relapse Records, one successful album under the Nuclear Blast and now they’re with the Polish titans, Agonia Records.
I’ve been waiting to see Immolation for a while now. They are one of the godfathers of death metal and Ross as much as Rob worked hard for almost three decades now to be successful and keep the original sound they’ve set themselves up all those years ago. They never repeat the album, there is always something fresh and dangerous about every record they release. This tour for them is the end of promotion for the Kingdom of Conspiracy album. We could listen to the title song from that record as well as All That Awaits Us and a few others. There is no Immolation gig without songs like Father, You’re not a Father or the classic, Into Everlasting Fire, Burn with Jesus or Unholy Cult. Superb set that included twelve songs. I was actually surprised that they never played in Bristol before. Amazing show from start to finish.
Yes, yes, yes! It’s time for Marduk. I will never get bored watching or listening to this band. Ever. Every record has something different to offer, something special. It must be hard to please all the fans. They have too many great songs. As expected, Marduk started with Frontschwein and The Blond Beast, both of the songs work pretty well together. To my surprise, they’ve played Still Fucking Dead and Cloven Hoof. Marduk’s setlist included a few all-time favourite classics like, Materialized in Stone and Wolves. Morgan’s commando unleashed Of Hell’s Fire with Azrael’s help, later causing total destruction with the cold, made of steel war tank, Panzer Division Marduk. I was left speechless, as usual. The masters of black metal don’t seem to be slowing down, they’re growing to be one of the greatest black metal bands on this Fistfucking God’s Planet.
To summarise all this brutal metal extravaganza, I must say, thank you to The Fleece in Bristol for bringing this package to the town. For a middle week gig, it was well attended. The sound was crushing good. I can’t wait to see all the bands again, somewhere, sometime again!
THE GOAT TAVERN 