What I’m really gutted by, is the fact that I only watched the first 20 minutes of the video before I had to get back to doing some work and by the time I got another chance to spend a couple hours watching it, the promo link had been removed. But with those first 20 minutes, it did explain quite a few of the comments made by Seth during the show, which if you only listened to, wouldn’t necessarily make loads of sense. That said, the album is a really enjoyable listen.
Recorded at the ‘Metropolitan Theater’ in Mexico City in February 2019, it includes the ‘Symphonic Experience Orchestra’, the ‘Enharmonía Vocalis Choir’ and the ‘National University of Mexico Children’s and Youth Choir’ along with the band Seth,
Christos, Krimh and Sotiris V on clean vocals, with live guitarist Psychon taking care of his guitar duties.
While it’s mostly screams from the audience, “Intro” also includes the choirs filling the theatre with their voices as the orchestra gently eases us into “Portrait of a Headless Man” as the band take to the stage.
The slow opening acoustic guitars of “Martyr” allow Seth to point out that while the audience shall be unable to mosh and create walls-of-death because of the rows of seats, it shouldn’t stop them from destroying the venue aurally, which the raucous applause shows they are more than willing to attempt.
“Prototype” is followed by “The Pyramid God” with Seth roaring away above the violins and heavy guitar riffs while Krimh blasts over the sounds of trumpets.
The choirs sound truly majestic on “The Enemy of Truth”, as does the orchestra, with the same very easily said for the hyper-fast “Communion” which has me tapping away in time with the drums.
The exquisitely innocent children’s voices belie the harshness that’s soon to follow as “The Vampire from Nazareth” gathers momentum to the point of hyper-blasting.
Heading back to ‘Titan’ we have “Dogma of Prometheus”, which may be longer in the video than on the album, before heading back even further to ‘Communion’ for “Lovecraft’s Death” then returning to their latest release ‘Codex Omega’ for “Dante’s Inferno”.
The audience appear very keen to hear “Persepolis” judging by their roars of enthusiasm, and rightly so really, as it’s a great song.
As they wind their way towards the end of the show “A Great Mass of Death” sounds wonderful with the booming brass and Sotiris V sounding like a soloing tenor, before Seth invites the audience to join the orchestra during their crescendo to add thousands of voices to the choir.
Slow and steady, but still extremely heavy “Anubis” takes us toward the final song of the show, “Dark Art” where the orchestra and choir sound as fresh as when they started the show over an hour earlier.
Showing they are able to pull off a show that incorporates everything they manage in the studio is a tremendous feat and something they manage without any apparent difficulty, so hats off to everyone involved in the show.
(8/10 Marco Gaminara)
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