(Continued from here)
The nature of a festival like this is that after spending several days running between stages and watching dozens of bands, it’s difficult to remember every performance. By the end, what stays with you are the truly exceptional moments — something unexpectedly spectacular, something predictably spectacular, or something spectacularly awful. Fortunately, Maryland Deathfest offered none of the latter (the curation really is that good), although I never quite figured out the appeal of anime-grind project HOUKAGO GRIND TIME. A lone Asian guy making faces onstage, backing tracks, prerecorded drums, absolutely nothing happening visually… Digging through the discography reveals a very specific sense of humor in the song and album titles, but watching it live (or semi-live) was honestly pretty dull.
Fortunately, there were plenty of genuinely insane performances. MDF fully lived up to its name, presenting the entire spectrum of brutal music, from MORTICIAN (the expected demolition job, though not quite as ferocious as a couple of years ago when it felt like every nearby skyscraper window might shatter) to LIVIDITY, CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE, ROTTEN SOUND, grind maniacs JARHEAD FERTILIZER, and the eternally magnificent PIG DESTROYER.
ROTTEN SOUND’s 1:30 a.m. performance got the crowd so fired up that an impromptu dance party broke out in the club afterward!
Among the brutality merchants, special mention goes to PUTRIDITY, whose utterly deranged, brain-melting, organ-liquefying performance turned everyone’s insides into Italian pasta. It was savage.
The crowd greeted female American-Czech brutal death outfit EMASCULATOR with tremendous enthusiasm. The venue nearly burst at the seams from people wanting to watch, scream, slam, and crowdsurf. It was probably one of the most heavily attended club performances of the festival, with the exception of BATUSHKA (who have honestly outgrown club stages at this point). The ladies were excellent.
Unfortunately, I never managed to catch BATUSHKA’s set. I did get the chance to chat with them briefly and take a photo at the hotel — they happened to be staying in the same one we were. Their performance coincided with one of the festival’s final sets, leaving me with a choice: spend the festival’s closing hours listening to liturgical chants, or celebrate life one last time with CEPHALIC CARNAGE on another stage. I couldn’t deny myself the pleasure of watching Colorado’s grand-whatever-else-narco-psychos. It was pure joy. Arms, legs, people, and inflatable bananas flew overhead; audience members performed some kind of tribal dance onstage before diving into the crowd; the frontman delivered barely coherent social commentary; everything spun, moved, swarmed, and exploded with noise. Exactly what was needed for a proper farewell.
Death metal from the “good, but instantly forgettable” category: GOD DETHRONED (Henri Sattler looked half-dead on stage), and THE CROWN (perfectly fine, but all rather samey).
Kansas brutal death outfit UNMERCIFUL certainly lived up to their name, delivering a crushing and merciless performance. I’d never seen them live before, but they’re worth remembering.
But the undisputed kings of the death metal division for me were BLOOD RED THRONE. Absolutely infectious. Massive sound, technical precision, total mayhem on and off stage (an inflatable cow spent most of the set flying around the audience, with somebody eventually attempting to crowdsurf on it), wild circle pits, relentless intensity, and complete insanity from the musicians themselves. They somehow managed to drink beer during the performance (one guitarist drinks while another covers his part), jump into the crowd, and at one point the bassist sprinted backstage at alarming speed while still carrying his instrument. Presumably an urgent bathroom emergency. Though considering everything else happening around him, he probably could have stayed.
Beyond death metal, the festival once again offered a broad spectrum of thrash, from the borderline parody-tribute antics of WHIPLASH to the already-mentioned fathers of the genre in KREATOR. As at nearly every MDF, DESTRUCTION were there as well (and, as usual, I skipped them — they do nothing for me). Also stopping by as part of their current co-headlining tour were VIO-LENCE and DEATH ANGEL. As luck would have it, both bands had played Charlotte just a week before the festival, so rather than watching the exact same sets twice, I’ll share impressions and videos from the club show instead.
VIO-LENCE is essentially 61-year-old Sean Killian backed by a group of slightly younger musicians, performing three now-classic albums from the late ’80s and early ’90s that still sound remarkably relevant today. Sean himself handles frontman duties admirably enough, but it’s obvious the years have taken a toll. Between various health issues — including a liver transplant — and a lifetime of hard living, moving around the stage doesn’t seem especially easy for him anymore.
But DEATH ANGEL… sweet merciful saints, they are incredible. The songs, the energy, the absolutely phenomenal voice and charisma of Mark Osegueda, flawless musicianship, pure fire and electricity from start to finish — there is something simultaneously exhilarating and scorching about every second this band spends on stage. After seeing them live, I still can’t forgive the architects of the American thrash “Big Four” concept for leaving DEATH ANGEL out. Neither vocally nor in terms of sheer live performance can today’s Big Four veterans compete with what DEATH ANGEL bring to the stage.
Continuing the discussion of special festival sets, Maryland Deathfest gave us the opportunity to experience one of the most revered names in Brazilian metal history: SARCÓFAGO. These pioneers of South American — and arguably global — death/thrash/black metal helped popularize corpsepaint, bullet belts, and many of the visual elements that became staples of extreme metal. Formed in 1984 and largely inactive since the mid-’90s, they left behind only four studio albums, yet even after all these years the material sounded fantastic on stage. Don’t ask me which original members were involved — every old photo I’ve ever seen of them was covered in makeup.
Another American exclusive came from OLD MAN’S CHILD, whose performance only reinforced one thing: the best decision Galder ever made was leaving DIMMU BORGIR. Hearing songs like “The Millennium King,” “Hominis Nocturna,” and “Doommaker” live again made me realize how much I’ve missed this band. It leaves only one wish: may the next album be just as good. And may I get another chance to see them live — even if it’s raining again.
Throughout the rest of the festival, Galder could be seen wandering around Baltimore with his girlfriend and a small entourage, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, taking photos, chatting with anyone who approached him, and generally looking like a man completely at peace with life. Then he’d disappear into the crowd to enjoy other bands. In fact, his bald head can be spotted headbanging in the SARCÓFAGO video above. He and several members of GRAVE were standing right near us at the front of the stage. Not bad company at all.
1914 made an impressive and highly anticipated American debut. Bathed in dark red and green lighting, with archival footage of soldiers projected behind them, faces covered in their trademark grime, they delivered a suffocating blend of blackened doom and Dmytro’s scraping, tortured vocals. Fans on the venue’s balcony unfurled a Ukrainian flag. An anti-war speech was naturally part of the performance, and the crowd enthusiastically joined repeated chants of “Fuck Putin,” eventually adding “Fuck Trump!” of their own. War is war.
The doom and stoner portion of the festival didn’t do much for me this year. Traditional doom, epic doom, bands like SOLITUDE AETURNUS — I simply cannot get into them. BONGZILLA and BONGRIPPER (especially BONGRIPPER) clearly required substances different from the ones we were consuming, so those performances mostly passed me by.
AVERNUS sounded quite good musically, but their presentation felt somewhat lifeless. RWAKE, meanwhile, delivered an unhinged display of drug-fueled fury — writhing, crawling, screaming madness that moved across the stage like withdrawal symptoms made flesh. The problem was that it remained exactly the same for fifty minutes straight. It’s entirely possible they only played one song.
One band that genuinely impressed me was Maryland trio BLACK LUNG. Operating somewhere between stoner rock and doom, they combined thick groove-laden guitars, expressive clean vocals, and genuinely interesting arrangements. Their latest album, Forever Beyond, has immediately jumped to the top of my listening queue. Memorable and impressive.
And finally, the band that completely shattered my brain, scooped it out with a tiny Finnish spoon, and left me staring into the void: the utterly devastating, impossible-to-describe, trance-inducing, hallucinogenic, and uniquely inhuman ORANSSI PAZUZU. After their late-night set, walking through Baltimore no longer seemed remotely frightening. After surviving that experience, what was left to fear?
To close things out, here are a few more snapshots of the festival crowd, food courts, merchandise area, and general MDF atmosphere.
