Concert Reviews

Aborted - Cryptopsy - Benighted - Hideous Divinity
March 26th 2019

Highline, Seattle, WA, USA

First concert in Seattle, time to see what this city is made of, and this looked like an excellent concert to start things off. I got to the highline early, and was surprised how small the club was. But I guess it makes sense, coming from the Bay Area, one of the largest population centers in the USA, Seattle's scene is bound to be smaller. But will the city make up for its size with its spirit?

The show started early by Seattle standards at 8:15 exactly, Hideous Divinity was the band I most wanted to see as I'd never seen them live before. The band gave an impressive all on the stage, but they had two things working against them. One, the sound wasn't great, not enough bass and it was tough to hear the individual instruments. And two, they were only on stage for like 25 minutes, I think they only played 5 songs, which wasn't enough. Otherwise, the vocalist slammed himself on stage like a mad man, even screaming into his mic hands free by holding it with his teeth. And what I could hear of the band, they seemed tight. Hope to see them again one day under better circumstances.

Then France's Benighted took the stage, their vocalist was energetic (although much of his stage show he took rom Frank Mullins of Suffocation). Their music though didn't have much variety, and so the muddy mix didn't do them any favors.

My hometown boys Cryptopsy took the stage next, I've seen them in their various forms for 20 years starting with their "Whisper Supremacy" record release party in Montreal in 1998. Hadn't seen them in awhile, and never with their vocalist Matt McGachy. He did an admirable job combining the best of Mike DiSalvo, Lord Worm, and his own material into a cohesive vocal performance. Song wise, they played an excellent mix of their newest eps, and mostly material off "None So Vile". While they also suffered from an imperfect mix, having a single guitar removed some muddies, and the bands style has a lot of start and stop and slam riffs, which cut through. Not to mention the energy, I mean, Drummer Flo Mournier is an older guy, but  he beats the hell out of those drums. I think their performance stole the show, that might just be Montreal pride talking, but I think the band had one if their best performances I'd ever seen.

Finally Aborted took the stage. Their music isn't quite as percussive as Cryptopsy, so it was a bit hard to hear individual parts in the mix, but they gave a strong performance playing a wide variety of songs from all their albums. We had 'Terror Vision' as expected, 'Retrogore', my personal favorite 'The Origin Of Disease', even some tracks off "Engineering The Dead" and "Goremageddon". Drummer Ken Bedene had pretty much the only snare I could hear clearly this evening during the blasting parts.

Overall a good concert, the crowd was plenty nuts with crowd surfing and violent moshing, just at a smaller scale than I'm used to. As mentioned, was slightly disappointed in the sound, will be interested in visiting the highline again to see if it was the show or the venue.

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