Many have been anxiously awaiting the return of Archspire as they support their latest tech death masterpiece, Bleed the Future. Tech Trek: The latest technical death metal stacked bill has begun as many discover the likes of Entheos, Benighted and Psycroptic. Few may know these bands going into the show but all of them will leave as fans.
Starting their set very early, Entheos still had a really decent turnout. The crowd hadn’t yet woken up but the Cynic-inspired spacey lead guitar work made for a more melodic experience which was welcome considering how much abrasive music would follow shortly after. Entheos are a band that seems to focus on invoking cosmic horror and the greater universe and its mysteries, a very common angle in technical death metal but it is an incredibly reliable tone and subject matter that can still feature a lot of variety and interesting approaches. This may not be intentional or even accurate but their sound definitely invokes the same spirit as Cynic, Obscura and perhaps even Rings of Saturn.
Despite having melodic guitar lines, Entheos are a pure-blood technical death metal band of extremely high quality featuring members of Animosity and The Faceless. Vocalist Chaney Crabb had a really formidable stage presence and even managed to wrestle attention away from the instrumentalists at times. ‘The Sinking Sun’ was the final song played and it featured so many tech death hallmarks and at times seemed like an Obscura song with its breakneck guitar riffing and sweep-picking segments.
Next up was French deathgrind band Benighted and this was the point that the entire crowd became absurdly rowdy. Blasting onto the stage with the absolutely unhinged and wild track ‘Martyr’, it became apparent instantly that Benighted did not come to play nicely and neither did the audience. The entire set was dominated by circle pits, flailing moshers and of course; crowd surfers. Crowd surfing was omnipresent at this show, there was rarely a song after this point that didn’t feature crowd surfing and there were often several at once that often collided with each other.
You could be forgiven for not being able to tell many of Benighted songs apart but that wasn’t really the purpose of their set. There were still songs that stood out like the muzak-filled ‘Reeks of Darkened Zoopsia’ and the abrasive grinding of ‘Nails’.Benighted even managed to include a sing-along section, a rarity at death metal shows and an impressive feat considering the majority of Julien’s vocals sounded inhuman, ‘Let the Blood Spill Between My Broken Teeth‘ kickstarted the final push as the room was swallowed by feral mosh pits and unmatched hostility.
Australian tech death outfit Psycroptic was next and they helped push the crowd to the next level in terms of wild shenanigans. Crowd surfers were all over the place and they were even shown how to do it properly by vocalist Jason Peppiatt after watching a particular individual swan dive into the crowd with the same gusto and confidence of Bugs Bunny diving into a rabbit hole. Psycroptic was the easiest to get lost in while listening, the constant fretboard gymnastics made it hard to follow songs at times but that just made it easier to treat the whole set as one singular experience designed to push the crowd as hard as it could go.
Their set was largely made up of tracks from their latest album, Divine Council which made for a really simple experience buying merch as they had the tab books with them for the very few people that actually had the talent to play anything Psycroptic could. ‘Enslavement’ was a particular highlight of the set due to its tense build-up, with how easy it was to move to and with how much carnage could be seen from a safe distance.
Finally, Canadian tech death masters Archspire took to the stage and managed to not only play some of the most technically demanding music to ever come out of the scene with laser-guided precision but also managed to fit fart jokes in their set, truly a masterful achievement that needs to be witnessed live. A minor criticism would be the blinding strobe lighting that made some moments difficult to see but that could just be a personal preference. Tracks like ‘Remote Tumour Seeker’ display an immense amount of hostility that makes it easy to dance and mosh to while still being technical.
‘Abandon the Linear’, ‘Golden Mouth of Ruin’ and everything else off of the Bleed the Future album is phenomenal on the record and it sounds almost identical here at the show which is immensely impressive. Archspire does require some research beforehand as their music can blend together a little bit at times but that’s a common criticism of most death metal plus if you’re going to a show, you should probably know the songs at least a little bit.
By now everyone has seen the Twister gag and it makes for a very fun interlude that shows off Archspire’s sense of humour which is very silly and adds a sense of absurdity when juxtaposed with the ultra-aggressive music and hopefully they continue to develop this element of their style and stage presence in the future. Archspire ended with ‘Drone Corpse Aviator’, a track that shows off some of the most jaw-dropping technical proficiency you could possibly find in technical death metal but there’s still a great deal of melody and catchy hooks between the machine gun drumming, massive sweeps and Oli Peters’ unmistakable staccato vocal style.
Tech Trek has been a phenomenal success so far and has been absolutely worth the wait. Many shows have been selling out for good reason, everyone on this bill is an absolute gem of brutality and if the future of Death metal shows is found in stacked bills with shorter sets; Tech Trek could be the standard every tour hopes to live up to from now on.
Stay Tech.
