Trap Them, Toxic Holocaust, Skeletonwitch, Black Dahlia Murder at the Basement, Concert Review 10/25/09

The Basement. Trap Them, Toxic Holocaust, Skeleton Witch, and The Black Dahlia Murder. I’d be stating the obvious if I told you our evening was awesome, so let’s get into the nitty gritty.

Trap Them offered a bit more than the expected entertainment with their stage antics, which included a self-sustained injury that gave me a great idea for a new series on FOX entitled “When Whipping Around Microphones Goes Wrong”. Interesting to note: spraying gratuitous amounts of fake blood on concert-goers is totally badass, but steadily dripping real blood from a self-inflicted forehead wound is not so much. What these boys may have lacked in hand-eye coordination and blood coagulation that night, they made up for in hardcore blunt force. They were out to fire up the crowd, they were fully engaged, their sound was pretty tight, and they were a great fit for this line-up.

"Bombdy bombdy bombdy..."

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Toxic Holocaust after seeing frontman Joel Grind take the stage in all his ’80s-hair-headband-denim-and-leather glory, but they were a tasty, thrashy surprise, and the perfect sound to transition from Trap Them to Skeletonwitch. This was my first time experiencing “Toxicologist” (a loving nickname for them I came up with after mishearing their name the first time…and a little doobage). I’ve gotta say my favorite song from their set was “Nuke the Cross”, which I interpreted as being about the Trashcan Man from The Stand hoarding Cold War nukes and unleashing them all at once at…God. Awesome.

We’re gonna skip Skeletonwitch for a moment and go straight to the main event. The monster that is Black Dahlia naturally thrives in any live venue, and this was my first time seeing them in a space as intimate as The Basement. There’s something about getting lost in the assault and barely being able to see the band through throngs of crowd surfers and moshers that reminds me what this genre is really about. As always, I was in awe of the explosive, positive energy of Trevor Strnad, waving his arms around, conducting the mosh pit like the maestro of some kind of symphony of destruction. The way he feeds on the crowd’s energy (and vice-versa) is a testament to his obvious love for metal. The place went nuts.

I saved Skeletonwitch for last in my review, because, honestly, I was more blown away by their set than any live metal performance I’ve seen in a while. What can I say about them besides DON’T EVER MISS A CHANCE TO SEE THEM LIVE. EVER. In what can only be described as a trademark display of soul thrashing black sorcery, this Athens group put on a show so fucking righteous, they damn near outperformed headliners BDM. This music picks the bone clean of flesh. If you put the kid from Omen in a microwave, the sounds he would make wouldn’t be as gnarly as the supreme riffage spewing forth from their mighty stacks adorned with glowing-eyed bison skulls. If they aren’t the unsung heroes of live metal, they’re certainly the not-sung-abouted-enough heroes of live metal. Between Garnette’s growling calls to “Smoke weed, Columbus…and eat some fuckin’ pussy!” I could tell from looking at some faces in the crowd that they did not see this band coming.

So we got fired up with a side of physical comedy, segued from a pleasant thrashy surprise from a glam-haired Portlander to a headline-upsetting onslaught of terror, and then into the inevitable soul-recharging excitement of a group whose love for metal is reflected in the smiles of the brutally beaten kids in the pit. It just doesn’t get as fun as this. Life is good.