One of death metal’s most legendary and offensively named bands return to Brighton for a night of beer drinking, hair-spinning madness. As part of the Fatality Big Weekend, which saw female-fronted grindcore band Iwrestledabearonce headline The Haunt the previous night, Dying Fetus brought their old school sound of technical death metal to Concorde2.
In support tonight is Arizona’s hugely successful outfit Job For A Cowboy who perform a brutal blend of nu-school flavours often referred to (reluctantly or pretentiously) as deathcore. Their set is tight and crushing, but mostly it helps to highlight how much of an iconic influence our headliners have had on countless amounts of bands since their birth in the early 1990s. We were tempted to make a jokey link between the word ‘birth’ in the last sentence and the name ‘Dying Fetus’, but it was never going to be in good taste.
Another thing that’s not a good taste is mosh sweat flicked out of the hair of somebody and into your beer, which if you stood too close to the pit tonight was inevitable. Beer does taste good, but as the guy next to us was keen to demonstrate you don’t necessarily have to drink it. Instead he chose to nonchalantly spray it over the crowd in front with a series of overarm flicks of the wrist before casually strolling into a circle pit.
Fetus play a varied set that spans almost their entire existence as a band, churning out tracks like ‘Pissing In The Mainstream’, ‘Your Treachery Will Die With You’ and ‘Procreate The Malformed’. The crowd react brilliantly to new songs ‘Subjected To A Beating’ and ‘Into The Trenches’ as the band effortlessly switch between slower, chugging riffs and double-kick led lightning speed guitar work. The slow and heavy parts have the crowd swaying in demonic unison before bursting into a frantic pit of beard and Cannibal Corpse shirts.
As the band leave the stage, and we pick the hair out of our drink, the DJ plays Perry Como’s ‘Magic Moments’. Unless you witnessed it, you’ll never truly appreciate how entertaining it is to hear groups of metallers whistling this as they walk home along Madeira Drive.
Concorde2, Sunday 16th September 2012
Words by Chris Biggs
Photos by Charles Shepherd
