Tag: death metal

Obituary at The Bellwether by Taylor Wong

Obituary At The Bellwether: 35 Years of Cause Of Death

Danny Baraz April 30, 2025

This past Saturday, April 26th, in the year of our Lord, 2025, Obituary, along with Nails brought their tour celebrating 35 years of Cause of Death to The Bellwether in Downtown Los Angeles. Tampa Florida’s Obituary released their second album, Cause of Death in 1990—35 years ago. I was a freshman in high school. I had never heard anything like it and I found out pretty quickly that NO ONE else had heard anything like it, either. My teenage feelings of suffering and despair and confusion and anger finally had a soundtrack. I was just getting into thrash metal and hardcore punk and picking up a guitar for the first time. My preferences leaned toward frenetic chaos with a high bpm. Fast and hard. But Obituary and Cause of Death showed me a new way—grinding, low tempo, heavy riffs that slowly dragged bodies across the floor. Sludgy breakdowns building to blast beat eargasms that changed my life forever. Slayer and others showed them the way but it was Cause of Death that had that mix of thrash and sludge that really got me off. That cassette lived in my Walkman for a good 3 months, uninterrupted. It formally introduced a

Devastation on the Nation w/ I AM Morbid at Belasco

Rob Shepyer December 29, 2024

When someone tells me there’s a death metal show tonight, I usually ask them what kind of death metal. If they tell me Morbid Angel is playing, I’ll definitely think about going. If they tell me Morbid Angel was just replaced by I Am Morbid, David Vincent’s version of the band, I’ve already bought my ticket before they’ve completed their sentence. related content: Morbid Angel at The Regent: A Lesson in Death What differentiates the sort of Death metal that makes a show worth going to for me is often times the vocal. Newly attuned listeners of the genre may consider it splitting sonic hairs to parse between different styles of guttural vocals but if I can understand the lyrics a death metal band is screeching out, then I consider the band superior in some respects. Nothing against the demonic belching of numerous Deathcore and Death Metal bands like Suffocation, that shared the stage with I Am Morbid at this show, but because I was able to understand David Vincent’s gregorian chants from hell, I was able to feel the gravity of his music. It simply sounded and felt more evil, powerful, and scary because the words had meaning. Devastation

Sound and Fury Fest 2023: The Stage Dive Will Never Die

Danny Ryan August 30, 2023

Sound and Fury is easily my favorite music festival, and consistently takes the spot as the best weekend of the year for me without fail. Returning again to Exposition Park for the second year in a row, the controversial choice to move the festival outdoors has proven again to succeed as a hardcore experience exclusive to Sound and Fury. The overwhelming heat and dust clouds were absolutely brutal this year compared to 2022, but passionate fans were not going to let anything stop them from hardcore dancing all weekend long. This was also the second year with involvement from art collective and fashion brand Brain Dead, and their influence could be seen everywhere from the stage backdrops to exclusive merch designs. Sound and Fury is absolutely unmatched when it comes to finding the best collaborators and vendors to help with making their vision come alive, something that more music festivals should take note of in the goal of creating an unforgettable experience that everybody in attendance feels a need to come back to. related: Risks Make Better Memories than Nostalgia – Sound and Fury 2022 One of the biggest draws to Sound and Fury’s 2023 lineup for me was the

Goths Go Metal: Tribulation at the Lodge Room

Rob Shepyer October 10, 2018

You don’t usually see goth boys and girls embrace extreme metal but in the case of Swedish melodic death metal band, Tribulation, the goths have found a band that represents their heart and soul and lets their dark fantasies play out on a stage. Tribulation doesn’t really incorperate the sound of goth in their music though. It’s this melodic death metal monster combined with glam/hard rock rhythm and jamming that makes for a show any fan of rock and roll can understand. Solos of every stripe, virtuosity from every player, I see Tribulation as the Guns and Roses of death metal. I was lucky enough to meet the whole band before the show as I waited in line to get tacos across the street. All of them without their signature makeup, they were incredibly friendly and even gave me the compliment of calling me their groupie! The Lodge Room usually doesn’t host metal, with its regal interior and the delicious paintings that decorate its walls, the venue seems more inclined hosting jazz or you know, decent varieties of music. This show fit just fine in the Lodge Room though and I expect more metal there to come. related content: The

Groveling Before the Gods of Grind: Napalm Death at Teragram

Rob Shepyer September 5, 2018

Of all the epic metal shows Church of the 8th Day has ever put on, Napalm Death at the Teragram has got to be my favorite. The creators and gods of Grindcore, Napalm Death, changed music forever by goofing on certain elements that other genres wouldn’t dare experiment with at the time in 1981. Partially a farce, Grindcore didn’t care about what lyrics their growls were actually belting out and whether they actually matched-up with what was written. They would also do something as absurd as write songs under 10 seconds long. This was so groundbreaking at the time that the band generated mainstream attention by people that were just curious about how such a strange and shocking art form could exist. related content: Satyricon’s Final Los Angeles Show At The Regent: A Night Too Blackened To Forget Underneath this musical insanity and humor, Napalm Death has always carried the most serious political messaging behind their extreme sound. Their first album Scum opens up just the same way their Teragram set did, with “Multinational Corporations” going into “Instinct of Survival” which is a very confrontational, diagnosis of the world’s disease. Greedy, self-serving, corporations making money off of people’s plight and dying.

Los Angeles Strikefest at the Regent: By Die-hards, For Die-hards

Dillon Vaughn July 6, 2018

Festival season is here and California has no shortage of options for niche entertainment seekers; from Arroyo Seco Weekend and Smokin’ Grooves to Burger Boogaloo and Summertime in LB, whatever musical religion you subscribe to has it’s fair share of representation. Delving into the true deep-cut side of things, there’s one fest that stands out as the real assembly for die-hards: Los Angeles Strikefest. Created and lovingly curated by the heavy hitting Church of the 8th Day and Nightforce Productions (a new face in the LA metal scene) version 1.0 of Strike Fest didn’t pull any punches and delivered three nights of bucket-list worthy acts. related content: The De-Evolution of Burger Boogaloo The first evening was the shortest of the three but remained far from being a pre-show. Fans were treated to sets from Los Angeles’ own media darlings Dread and Blade Killer, Matt Harvey (of Exhumed) performing in both Pounder and the reunion of Dekapitator, and a very hyped and rare performance by Detroit’s Demon Bitch. Closing out the night was Nasty Savage, the band serving one of the most direct examples of bleeding for the art. Warned by security to watch for “flying glass and metal and shit”

Soulfly And Nile: From The Amazon to The Whiskey

Rob Shepyer May 22, 2018

When I was thirteen years old, strewn above my bed, watching over me as I slept, was none other than Max Cavalera. His silhouette standing over the ocean, arms a-stretched like Rio De Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer, was on the cover of Soulfly‘s 1998 debut album, the poster flag of which hung upon my wall. This was Max’s new band and new approach, where Sepultura was a landmark fusion of world music and metal and inspired bands from thrash to death metal to hardcore to nu-metal alike, Soulfly was a spiritual reinvention. related content: Satyricon’s Final Los Angeles Show At The Regent: A Night Too Blackened To Forget It had taken me forever to see Max Cavalera live, either because I’m a poser or because I got so into punk that I forgot Soulfly, but with this Whiskey show popping my cherry, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the music like I was still thirteen. The first band I saw take the stage was Not My Master from El Paso, Texas. Texas produces a very sonically visceral strain of metal and Not My Master are no exception. They’re powerful but but don’t veer too far into noise, so fans of

Morbid Angel at The Regent: A Lesson in Death

Rob Shepyer May 13, 2018

Morbid Angel is one of the longest reigning, pioneering, OG Flordia death metal bands still touring. If one were to make a list of the “Big 4” of death metal, one would have to place them in the the number 2 slot, only after Death. Having titled their records alphabetically, the band has already gotten to K with Kingdoms Disdained an album that scrapped their former lead singer and bassist David Vincent to reunite with Steve Tucker. Under the master guidance of guitarist and band leader Trey Azagthoth, this latest 2017 release is one of the most crushing and riveting albums in the entire universe of extreme music and for a first generation death metal band to have released it among all these young kids trying to reinvent the wheel of metal, is truly significant of Morbid Angel’s greatness and right to reign. related content: The Battle of The Bays: Obituary & Exodus Clash At Teragram Ballroom Church of the 8th Day hosted Morbid Angel at the Regent with three openers, each contributing to a night of ear-splitting insanity. The first of which was Voices of Ruin, strapped with spiked leather and growls of Herculean magnitude, the band’s sound was

The Battle of The Bays: Obituary & Exodus Clash At Teragram Ballroom

Rob Shepyer October 12, 2017

Thrash is the father of every form of extreme metal on the heavy metal family tree. If it wasn’t for Slayer there would be no death metal or black metal. There have always been bands that have teetered on the border of death and thrash metal, german thrash bands like Kreator and Sodom brought death metal vocals and heaviness into thrash, while bands like Obituary brought thrash metal accessibility and groove into death metal. Perhaps that was always the secret to Obituary’s longevity, of all the original Florida death metal bands, beginning with Chuck Shuldiner’s Death then continued with Morbid Angel and Deicide, Obituary is the only band of the bunch still reigning. What separated Obituary’s music from these other bands is that they took a more accessible, groove and rhythm approach to death metal, it wasn’t a total noise fest of blast beats and guttural vocals. The band was always more seeped in their southern rock roots than the rest. Almost like how Weedeater is to stoner metal. related content: Weedeater And The Obsessed At The Regent: Blaze It Up, Fool The Florida death metal sound was born out of Tampa Bay in the Morrisound Recording studio but then