Wandering towards the door of The Underworld I began to wonder whether I’d got the night wrong. There wasn’t a single person milling about outside and certainly no queue. As I got to the ticket booth however, a dreadlockless Mark Osegueda walked out, so at least I knew Death Angel were here. Once downstairs I realised that if anyone turned up tonight they certainly weren’t interested in the opening acts as there were only about 8 of us in front of the stage as Extrema finished up their sound check. Another amusing fact is that the entire band walked off stage, waited 10 seconds for the intro music to start and resumed the exact positions they had vacated 30 seconds earlier in order to start their set. Gotta love sticklers for formality and having been around for 27 years now, I guess they have the rituals they adhere to. Vocalist Gianluca Perotti reminded me a lot of Phil Anselmo as he prowled the stage, but as soon as he opened his mouth the similarity was cemented. “Selfishness” is straight out of the ‘Reinventing the Steel’ mould with the screams and growls to go with Tommy Massara’s chunky guitar rhythms, Gabri Giovanna’s finger picking and bass slapping accompanied by Paolo Crimi pounding away on the drums with plenty of triplet kicking for good measure. Letting us know that they’d just completed a video for “Again and Again” and that we should go check it out they proceeded to thrash it out with unbridled enthusiasm making it far faster and heavier than the studio version. Playing another couple tracks they thanked us for our support and engaged in friendly banter in both English and Italian. They ended their set with another new track, “The Politics”, even though that wasn’t really their intention when you consider how disappointed they looked about being told they’d run out of time and weren’t allowed to actually conclude their set with the song they wanted to. After the show I chatted to Gianluca and discovered that he was born in the little village my mother’s family comes from. Probably completely uninteresting to you lot, but we found it rather amusing, to say the least.
The last time I watched Dew-Scented was 10 or so years ago. I think they were touring to support the ‘Impact’ album and vocalist Leif Jensen is the sole member of that line-up that’s still in the band. Bearing this in mind, I’m pretty certain that their sound hasn’t altered very much at all in the interim, it’s still fast aggressive thrash metal with gruff deathlike shouted vocals with crisp and very clear leads. Actually that’s one thing that really struck me, how clear all the bands sounded. Joost van der Graaf’s bass was a thumpy low end rather than a distorted rumble, each guitar was perfectly audible and when the leads were played they were mixed to perfection rather than being overbearing or disappearing completely, making the trade-offs flow smoothly from Rory Hansen to Martin Vriesde and back. Every cymbal beating and tom roll could also be heard over the snapping of the snare and the clicking of the kick drums as Koen Herfst battered the small kit, placed in front of Will Carroll’s substantially larger one, during his solo. They blazed through their 45 minute set, citing they were going to keep the banter between songs as brief as possible in order to play as many songs as they could. The fact that they were playing fast songs added to the feeling that their set was a lot shorter than was. Much in the same way swimming 50m underwater seems to pass far quicker than when on the surface, or maybe that’s because you’re actually swimming twice as fast in order to breathe again. Tracks such as “Never to Return”, which they assured us wasn’t about London even though they had to skip playing here on their last UK outing owing to the coach breaking down in Scotland, “Storm Within” and “Thrown to the Lions” were eagerly received by the slowly increasing throng that they kept coaxing to step closer to the stage. I’m pretty certain they wrapped things up with “Acts of Rage”, but not before getting us to sing “Happy Birthday” to Joost who was celebrating his fortieth by having a cream pie planted firmly in his face ala Monty Python. He took it well and after towelling himself and his bass concluded their set with a huge grin on his face.
Now for the reason we were all here… Death Angel! Sauntering on stage to huge cheers from the no longer empty venue and the intro to the new album which quickly breaks into the first track “Left for Dead” letting us know that we’re for a very fast joy ride tonight. Without any preamble they do a 1-2 from their seventh album by going into “Son of the Morning” thereby letting Mark Osegueda hit all the high notes over Rob Cavestany and Ted Aguilar’s intricate guitar work and wailing leads. After showcasing their newest material for us, they immediately took us back to their oldest material in the form of “Mistress of Pain” to the raucous applause of everyone present. By this point Damien Sisson’s issues with the bass amp had been completely sorted, but to be fair I could hear every note he was slapping through the PA, so it’s likely the DI was working while he wasn’t getting it to do so as a monitor on stage. We were let know several times throughout the gig that they sincerely appreciated our support, knowing full well that we had the option of seeing them or some geriatrics performing on the other side of London, like that was even a difficult choice for most of us. Since they are touring to support the new album we got to hear quite a bit of it during their 90 minute set with Will Carroll having no problems whatsoever keeping precision timing on “Fallen” with its constant stopping and tricky beats. The following 2 songs were new to me, being the title track “Relentless Revolution” and second song “Claws in So Deep” from their 2010 release which I’m currently waiting for, but played with the tightness of a band that’s been playing the songs together for the better part of half a decade.
Next came the title track from the new album “The Dream Calls for Blood” which is aptly about following your dreams and aspirations no matter what, else all you’re really doing is dying slowly inside. As the sound of waves came crashing over the PA the thought that rang through my mind was: “Fuck this reviewing malarkey, I’m here to have fun” so I let me hair down and by the time “Seemingly Endless Time” was in full swing, so was my head as I thrashed about as if I were 17 again. Back to the new album again with “Succubus” then “Execution/Don’t Save Me” where during “Execution” it sounded like a fire-alarm was going off causing everyone to look around to see whether we should be leaving only to have a grinning Mark step centre-stage lift the mic and yell “Run!” before everyone else broke into “Don’t Save Me” with the siren abruptly silenced. Heading back to their first album of the 21st century and “Thicker Than Blood” had everyone, well near me at least, singing along as we did to “Sonic Beatdown” too. Ted returned from a guitar swap with the ESP adorned with one of the wolves from the new album cover which he was using for all the new tracks, in this case being “Caster of Shame”, before they thanked us for a good evening and unceremoniously removed themselves from the stage. As is custom this prompted a chant of “Death Angel” until they slowly returned with Mark introducing Damien and Will over a couple bars of “Iron Man”, he then introducing Ted and Rob followed by a verse and chorus of “Love Gun” for a laugh. “Lord of Hate” was followed quickly by “Truce” as Mark pointed out that there was a hard curfew and they had no time to waste. Letting us know that this would be their final song for the night, but not because they didn’t have more to play but rather because the power would be cut if they ventured over the prescribed bounds, “Thrown To The Wolves” had the pit go manic with it encircling the pillar as an eye in a storm and finally wrapping the evening up the outro to “The Ultra-Violence” to end it all.
My only gripe about the gig, and one made more bitter for me after looking at set lists played on the continent, is that there was nothing from ‘Frolic’ played, but with that being it… Oh and that maybe a 2 hour set could’ve worked too. I can’t really say there was much to complain about here at all, and I’m definitely not missing another gig of theirs, they’re too much fun.
Marco Gaminara
Leave a Reply