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Mortician

Akercocke

Next up were British Akercocke, whom I earlier on in the evening had interviewed. Akercocke did their synth by a laptop on stage, on which vocalist Jason Mendonca started a track in media player before each track. It seemed a bit insecure, but it worked nonetheless. Now, you can say much about Akercocke and their music as it is very extreme, and it is everything but easy listening and mainstream. But you cannot deny that they are fucking talented musicians. Jason is one of the most amazing vocalists I have ever witnessed perform live, as he can simply do anything. And so he does. He does deep growls, the highpitched screams, Slayer-like yells and clean singing. All perfectly, and it just fits the music so well. Other than that, he and other guitarist Matt Wilcock make one hell of a guitar duo, both pulling off mindblowing solos and complicated riffs by the dozen. The drumming must not be left unmentioned, as David Gray on drums did an excellent job with his blast beating and extreme thrash drumwork. The first half of the show was the most impressive though, as it was a perfect mix of extreme Death and some of their more quiet clean-riffed songs, which are very atmospheric, and along with the bass of Peter Theobalds created a very dark feel. This great mix of ambience and pure heavyness faded towards the end though, as the hammering extreme metal dominated the later part of the setlist. This, as said before, is very uneasy listening, and it tears on the ears and gets tirering in the long run. But all in all, I must say that this was a very impressive show.

Mortician

Now headlining Mortician were up. This set can easily be described in one sentence: Three people doing everything they can to sound like torture, whatever torture sounds like. And this is true in more than one fashion. Firstly, and most importantly, the music is very, very horrible. I wouldn't even go as far as calling it music. Not erupting from the heavily overdosed speakers of The Rock anyway. Secondly, each of their no more than 2-and-a-half-minute songs started with a pre-recorded track that sounded like someone being tortured or killed. Thirdly, if you some day should find you have nothing to do, go to a lyrics site and read some of these guys' lyrics. It's not even funny. And to bash them just a little more, I would like to say that they probably had the worst vocalist I have ever heard. I seriously could not hear the difference between when the vocalist was singing, or growling, or whatever the hell he was doing, and when it was just the bass that was pounding out through the speakers. It was that deep. And though one might say that it is impressive to bring forth such a low pitched voice, it just didn't help the rest of the music in any way. These three guys just slaughtered their instruments in the most malevolent way possible. The only good thing I can come up with, is that the drummer seemed to be very talented, and that now 8 or 9 Heavy Metal fans were up by the stage swinging around their long hair. This kind of music is not music in my ears. It's just noise.