Concert Reviews

Cannibal Corpse - Nile - Krisiun - The Crown
Sept 1st 2000
The Whisky, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Again, the car heads to the infamously small Whisky on sunset blvd, this time however, the destination is a sold out show. So sold out there's a line snaking for blocks of people hoping to grab any extra space left in the building after the concert goers with tickets have entered. And they said death metal was dead...

First up was some local act with a drum machine. They didn't even play in time with the recorded tracks. Enough about them.

The Crown was next, they're from Sweden, and I'd never heard of them before. Their music wasn't really death metal, more old school thrash in an older Metallica vein. Not bad at all, they had some good songs and good riffs, but not my sort of thing anymore.

Krisiun was next. I'd never heard of these guys either, but this power trio put on an excellent performance. Apparently from Brazil, their drummer was sort of monotonous, but, my god, I mean, he started doing fast double kicks at the beginning of the first song, and then didn't stop the whole way through. No no, I really mean that, he didn't deviate at all from fast, and very LOUD double kicks through every riff of every song. This is why I said monotonous, as in, there really needed to be more variety in tempos and grooves, but damn, I have to give that drummer all the respect in the world as far as athletics goes, he never even broke a sweat. The bass player did lowish vocals, and was pretty impressive, the single guitar player made for a very clear sound, and he did some fucking super fast solos at a speed I hadn't seen in quite some time. Good show, I'll be picking up a few of their cds.

Nile was next, and since I'd seen CC before, Nile was sort of the highlight of the show. And they did a great job. I felt the drums could have been pulled up in the mix a bit, but performance wise, they were really insane. The two guitarists and bass player all shared vocals pretty equally, the guitarist on the right (Dallas Toler-Wade I believe) had this super low voice that cut right through the mix, and he rolled his eyes back in his head every time he sang, making it look like he was possessed! The other guitar player used midi guitar samples to do all the symphonic elements that appear on the cd, so rest assured, you get the full nile experience, egyptian inspired interludes and all. I'd like to tell you what they played, but they played a lot of stuff off the new album that's not out yet, so I can't name all the names, but they did play 'The Howling of the Jinn', 'Black Seeds Of Vengeance', and 'Chapter For Transforming Into a Snake'.

Finally Cannibal Corpse. They were really impressive actually. Well, they're always really impressive live, but one thing that really did it for me was they played a lot of older tracks that they didn't play last time I saw them live. They played a few new tracks like 'Pounded Into Dust', and 'I Will Kill You', but also a lot of oldies like "I Cum Blood' and 'Covered with Sores'. I don't know, maybe they've played these songs for awhile now, but at least as far as the last time I saw them in concert, they seemed to spend more time getting a bigger variety of older material, which was nice to see. Of course, they played all the staples, 'Hammer Smashed Face', 'Stripped, Raped and Strangled', 'Fucked With A Knife' (dedicated to the females in the room), 'Staring Through The Eyes of the Dead', and 'Perverse Suffering'. Sound wise, they were excellent, every instrument clear in the mix, although Paul's double bass was pretty quiet during the fast stuff (quite loud in the slower stuff, so I guess he doesn't use triggers and doesn't hit the drums very hard when he goes fast), but his snare drum cut through like a gunshot, even during the fastest songs. George's vocals were great as usual, I think sound wise, the whisky just has great sound, it's small so you get it loud, but never muffled. Go see this show when it arrived in your neighborhood.

Oh, and one last note. I made a statment last time that maybe the California moshing crowds just weren't very good, well this show, the pit was going like a mother fucker, so I retract my statement, the LA audience certainly knows how to treat a band.

Back to Concerts