Sepultura + Death Angel
The Gov
16 May 2018
by Jason Leigh
Surprisingly for tonight’s night of metal at the Gov, the audience was well behaved. The front and centre whirlpool of the moshpit was to be expected and if you didn’t want to be there you didn’t have to be and generally most people were aware of others’ personal space. Speaking of personal space, locals Truth Corroded did their best on the cramped stage due to the main acts’ drum and equipment set-ups. They looked the part in a uniform of black almost indistinguishable from the audience, literally wearing their influences on their sleeves, their shirts depicting the names of metal bands you have probably never heard of. Unsurprisingly, the clichéd self-flagellating metal vocal was employed such that it was not possible to determine meaning amongst the guttural ranting. As their set progressed, they got heavier, performing older material such as Disfiguring with a lightning quick flickering light show paralleling the drumbeat that could potentially trigger an epileptic episode.
In between sets, multiple roadies worked at disassembling and reassembling the drum kits as though working at a racetrack pit stop, enlarging the set up for the following band, Death Angel. So too was there a significant increase in the volume for Death Angel, with a sound so loud that you could be deaf and still appreciate it.
Stalwarts Mark Oesgueda on a Ronnie James Dio style vocal and Rob Cavsetany on guitar with the occasional prog rock like guitar solo were joined Ted Aguilar on guitar and Will Carroll drums. Damien Sisson on bass seemed to be having too much fun, with either a thumbs up or a metal salute and poking his tongue out at every chance he got and was almost breaking that fourth wall of fictional anger that bands of this type usually project.
Mark Oesgueda was sharing himself with the audience, prowling the stage unencumbered by an instrument with multiple squeals of “Adelaide”, encouraging the audience with “I wanna feel you move” prior to The Ultra Violence seguing into Thrown to the Wolves. Their penultimate song Lost was a highlight and the set ended with The Moth, both from latest album “The Evil Divide”. Although only 50 minutes had passed, it seemed a lot longer and their set was definitely the best of the three bands tonight.
With a slight delay, Sepultura arrive onstage, Eloy Casagrande on drums, Andreas Kisser on guitar appearing to have changed little over the years, while Paulo Jr on bass is now looking like Andy Serkis playing Gandalf with slicked back hair. From the start, the imposing hulking figure of singer Derrick Green is perspiring enough on his own for the rest of the band, spending nearly the entire rest of the set glistening with his black singlet shirt drenched and clinging to his body. Although there is little talking with the audience early on, with the stage simply going dark in between songs, Derrick does have an unspoken dialogue with the fans, waving his arms about and conducting the moshpit like a puppeteer. When he does finally speak, there is only a slight variation between his speaking and singing voice, with a deepness such that he could replace James Earl Jones doing Darth Vader.
Halfway through the set, we are told by Andreas that this is Derrick’s 20th year in the band and they play a three song suite from that first album he did with them, starting with the title track Against and including the song that started it all for Derrick, Choke. Derrick then asks, “Are you ready to bow down to the Machine Messiah?” followed by a very prog-rock like introduction and he employs a very different style of singing, incongruous to the prior growled out chants, something almost akin to a croon, a style that I had thus far been wondering whether or not he would be capable. During this song, I note a roadie offstage to the right playing along on guitar, something many of the audience may have heard and considered to be a backing tape.
Derrick leaves stage to be replaced by an acoustic guitar on a stand, on which Andreas plays an acoustic Brazilian motif during the instrumental that follows, Iceberg Dances. Derrick returns to pound his drum then announces, “something older, faster”, before one of their earliest songs, Refuse/Resist, is performed and the crowd surfing begins. He gives thanks and they leave the stage to a sea of arms raised in a metal salute, the same salute that is repeated upon their return a few moments later.
During the encore, the mosh becomes almost a dance as Derrick plays his drum again and there is a co-lead vocal by Andreas in Portuguese as they complete their set with their own commemoration of the “Roots” album, performing Ratamahatta and Roots Bloody Roots before again leaving the stage with midnight not so far away.
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