Arriving in time for British based Death Metallers TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED, it was encouraging to see a good sized crowd already in the smaller room of Sheffield’s Corporation. This band are an in your face, entertaining and an energetic unit, and with the band members sporting various shirts from NILE to MESHUGGAH, you could tell straight away who they were influenced by. Drummer Max Blunos was particularly impressive, giving the drums some serious beating despite his less muscular arms than others in the death metal genre. Highlights of the set included the brutal ‘Impregnable Miscreation’, ‘Retribution’ and set closer ‘Laceration’. If you are into your death metal, then TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED are certainly worth checking out.

Next up were not only fellow country mates of tonight’s headliners, but also a band that hail from the same city. Montreal based BENEATH THE MASSACRE came onto a willing crowd which soon got the action going in the form of hardcore dancing, moshing and headbanging. They class themselves as technical death metal, but on tonight’s performance I would say they are more deathcore – but then it is a fine line! Still, the style, layout, formation and breakdowns of songs like ‘Our Common Grave’ and ‘Society’s Disposable Son’, is classic deathcore. Still, tonight’s performance was good, technical difficulties meant that the band hit the stage late, thus ultimately resulting in headliners CRYPTOPSY having to cut their set short too.

Having heard of a mass backlash by CRYPTOPSY fans concerning their latest record, ‘The Unspoken King’ being a change in style from their normal high technical, yet unashamedly brutal death metal to something more akin to deathcore, I was apprehensive about what would be in the set tonight. Thankfully, the majority of the set was made up of material from earlier albums with only a couple coming from the latest album, and even those sounded damn good tonight, with new vocalist Matt McGachy doing a decent job considering that Lord Worm was pretty much irreplaceable.

Opening up with ‘Worship Your Demons’, the set flew by as every second was enjoyed by the Sheffield death metal faithful. ‘It’s Dinner Time’ also made an appearance in the set tonight, a song written mocking their detractors who thought they had gone deathcore/metalcore in style or whatever you want to call it. Other set highlights included ‘Abigor’, ‘Cold Hate Warm Blood’ and encore song ‘Phobophile’ for which the crowd instigated a wall of death. It was brilliant to see one of the best drummers in this genre in action tonight. It’s amazing at how fast Flo Mounier can play and on the size of his kit too.

Deathcore or not, CRYPTOPSY put on a great performance and all the fans who came out tonight for either them or the other bands would not have gone home disappointed. I, for one will be looking forward to seeing them again in the future, and if your going to HAMMERFEST in April, check out TRIGGER THE BLOODSHED…you will not be disappointed.

Ratings:

Review by Adam Fredericks