Local lads Crypsis make a stern entrance and metal heads congregate promptly at the front, ready to embrace the pit. The band clearly rehearse often because they have an incredibly clipped style and know the songs inside out. There are a lot of stop-start elements and finger frenzy guitar riffs in the music. Crypsis strive for technically advanced music that pushes their ability with all the original elements of metal such as pace, strength and aggression. It makes mainstream music like The Strokes sound boring and simple.
The crowd approve of stomping belter ‘Immortal Mind’ and there is hair everywhere. Crypsis’ singer even looks like cousin It from The Adams Family. This is fierce thrash metal, imagine The Haunted mixed with Slayer. Ending the set with their own ‘Seasons in the Abyss’ style anthem ‘Message from Death’, they achieve a feisty reception and set the stage for Cannabis Corpse.
Cannabis Corpse from Richmond, Virginia formed in 2006 and feature members of the band Municipal Waste. This is their first time touring the UK, with a great line-up of venues to visit. The music is a mixture of pot-worship with hardcore riffs; stomping metal with grind grooves in the form of thrash/death metal and parodies Cannibal Corpse.
On arrival they suffocate the already dehydrated crowd with ‘Blunted at Birth’ in a machete of sound and the amps blast out fast ear-crunching metal. They introduce ‘Sentenced to Burn One’ and stoners unite with fists in the air. The singer growls and shrieks like a frustrated monster during ‘Skull Full of Bong Hits’ and the devoted followers of this underground genre roar back lyrics they have clearly made a great effort to learn.
The weed songs continue with ‘Shit of Pot Seeds’ and ‘Every Bud Smoken’. If smoking was still legal in venues this place would be blazing, it is a shame. Cannabis Corpse finish with a new song called ‘Sorry to Depart’ and we are all just as sorry. The negative connotations surrounding this genre of music are incorrect; everyone is friendly and any rough pit action is for a laugh not in order to hurt anybody. It makes for a nice change to get some raw ugly metal in our veins, we just might be hooked.
Cannabis Corpse
The Hydrant
Friday 2 Sept 2011
WORDS BY JOHN MCLEAN
