APRIL 25th, 2023
CARCASS 2023 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

Review by Metallic Barbie
Photos by Peter Ruttan

“I love the smell of a mosh pit in the early evening hours on a sunny Tuesday”: said everyone last night at the massive quad bill featuring Texas’ Creeping Death, Arizona’s Sacred Reich, Virginia’s Municipal Waste, and Liverpool’s Carcass at The Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver.  Metalheads were out in full force and full regalia for this wicked lineup, none of whom phoned it in.

If ever there was a reason to coalesce such a collection of beautifully homeless-looking individuals outside the skankiest corners of East Van, Creeping Death was it.  From note one the mosh was going and the beers were flying.  Opening with banger “Humanity Transcends” and knuckle-dragging right into the next, vocalist Reese Alavi, guitarists Trey Pemberton and AJ Ross, bassist Eric ‘Rico’ Mejia, and drummer Lincoln Mullins conducted a full-on auditory assault, playing from their EP The Edge of Existence, “Intestinal Wrap” – a tune famously collab’d upon with George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher of Cannibal Corpse, and closing with the title track of their 2018 EP Specter of War.  Between Pemberton’s spinning double kicks and the dastardly guttural musings from Alavi, Creeping Death delivered the death metal blow to a sacrificial crowd.

Switching gears, 80s thrashers Sacred Reich took over the stage, and raged like it was 1985.  It’s been in the neighbourhood of 35 years since vocalist/bassist Phil Rind, guitarist Wiley Arnett, and drummer Dave McClain have been to Vancouver, and this time they came with a young addition: guitarist Joey Radziwill, all ready and willing to set the time machine back to Ignorance & Surf Nicaragua.  Oozing positivity and sharing their messages of perseverance and inclusivity, Sacred Reich demonstrated how they owned the thrash scene and how they took it back with Awakening in 2019.  Geriatric crowd surfers, headbanging injuries and full-on chaos ensued as they ripped from “Divide & Conquer” to “Manifest Reality” and “Death Squad”, naming a few.  No holds were barred and every body was rocked by this long-awaited return.

Pumping the tank with full-on supreme, Municipal Waste tore up the room with their Steel Panther-like take on thrash, throwing hair and glittery shade throughout the set.  No strangers to partying, Tony Foresta (vocals), Ryan Waste (guitar), Nick Poulos (lead guitar), Philip Hall (bass), and Dave Witte (drums) pushed the crowd to mosh harder, drink more, and called on everyone older than 72 to crowd surf.  From the gentle “Demoralizer” to the gut rot of “Beer Pressure” and dick punch of “You’re Cut Off”, the pedal was held to the floor with a lead foot straight to the classic “Born To Party”.  But that was just the warm-up.

Back-sliding to the aggressive unapologetic extreme metal of Carcass, the crowd was force-fed riff after chord after lick after oral assault in all the most horrific ways.  The 16 song list captured all the rotting, gaping wounds of the band’s 35 year stint on the operating table.  Ripped from the likes of Symphonies of Sickness and Heartwork and aborted from Surgical Steel and Torn Arteries, Carcass dug into the collective gut first with “Kelly’s Meat Emporium”, followed by “Under the Scalpel Blade”, “The Scythe’s Remorseless Swing”, “Ruptured in Purulence/Heartwork” (to name a few), and using “316L Grade Surgical Steel” disemboweled the remnants.  The precision with which vocalist/bassist Jeff Walker, guitarist Bill Steer, guitarist James ‘Nippy’ Blackford, and drummer Daniel Wilding executed and delivered the set is exactly how they established themselves at the forefront of the repugnant fringes of metal.

If there was a lesson to be learned this night, Carcass taught it with serrated strings and seeping skins, only to drive it home with festering vocals, reminding us all that they are the only prescription for any gruesome malady. And what a gloriously infected night it was.