The Black Dahlia Murder, Skeletonwitch, and Toxic Holocaust at The Annex
The Black Dahlia Murder
The Black Dahlia Murder's career has been an over-polished, four-album love-letter to Swedish death-metal legends At The Gates, but the Detroit metalcore band's live set really pushes that sound to a better place. Sweaty vocalist Trevor Strnad and company's Saturday show at The Annex proved that they can rock like a five-headed rhino on speed without taking themselves all that seriously.
“This next song’s about putting your penis in the vagina of the dead,” Strnad declared before the band ripped into “A Vulgar Picture,” which definitely was about fucking a corpse. “A quick pry of the casket reveals her body paralyzed / So long I’ve waited to thrust my fingers deep inside,” Strnad screeched as crowd-surfing bodies flew over the massive, fist-pumping audience. Meanwhile, long-haired guitarists Brian Eschbach and Ryan Knight ripped out blurry-fingered melodies and sludgy chord bursts as the monster rhythm section of drummer Shannon Lucas and bassist Ryan Williams hammered out a foundation of machine-gun rhythms. Knight’s mind-blowing guitar solo in “A Vulgar Picture” was a definite high point in the performance, as our eyes struggled to follow his fretting hand.
As BDM ripped through a set that pulled mostly from this year’s Deflorate, Strnad flew across the stage, jumped into the audience, and persuaded the crowd to hold up some kid in an Obituary T-shirt for the duration of “Christ Deformed.” “We aren’t going to play another note until you guys pick him up.” Strnad demanded. “Show this kid the ride of his fucking life.” Finally, before the band wrapped up its set with a furious rendition of “Funeral Thirst,” Eschbach grabbed a mic and addressed the crowd. “Public service announcement: This isn’t a fucking Beastie Boys concert and there is no fucking encore. Have fun while you still can.” Afterward, Strnad offered a “danke schoen” and stood onstage chatting with fanboys.
While Dahlia’s set was remarkable, it should be noted that openers Toxic Holocaust and Skeletonwitch gave the headliner a serious run for its money. (We unfortunately missed the awesome Trap Them, which kicked things off.) Watching the heaving thrash-punk of Toxic Holocaust was a bit like jumping through a magic portal to the Bay Area thrash scene in 1981, thanks in part to the crust-punk imagery provided by vocalist-guitarist Joel Grind. His bleached mullet and spiked vest made him look like one of the cretins from the cult-classic Troma film Class Of Nuke 'Em High. Before ripping through “The Lord Of The Wasteland,” Grind suggested that anyone not head-banging kindly “turn around and face the fucking back wall so that only the real fucking metalheads can be up front.” After TH closed with “Nuke The Cross,” Skeletonwitch bombed the stage with its no-frills approach to melodic death metal.
The entire room roared and a fog machine spewed all over the stage as Skeletonwitch thrashed through "Beyond The Permafrost" with a rawness that matched the deer skulls nailed to the band's amplifiers. Massively bearded vocalist Chance Garnette—clad in giant spiked gauntlets and what we’re pretty sure was a Death T-shirt—prowled the stage as he growled, howled, gurgled, and screeched over the dynamic riffing of guitarists Scott Hendrick and Nate Garnette. Every guitar harmony was crystal-clear, punching its way to the front with loads of spinning melodies from the new album Breathing The Fire. Skeletonwitch also ripped through many tunes from 2007’s Beyond The Permafrost in true boot-on-the-monitor fashion, grimacing and head-banging its way through set-enders “Despoiler Of Human Life” and “Within My Blood.” Skeletonwitch did quite well for itself on Saturday—the set seemed to please both the folks who stood on the sidelines during BDM’s set with their arms crossed, and the less-discriminating metal-heads who flopped around for all the bands. Can Madison please start getting more metal shows like this?
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