My first ever visit to Manchester Academy and it’s for this absolute stonker of a bill.
First up, Nervosa. Before they came on, the background music was “Am I Evil?”, to which the crowd were singing along before the song was cut short, which prompted boos. I heartily endorse this behaviour! On Nervosa’s bass drums, they have a logo with “Thrash Death Metal” written around it which basically gives the game away in terms of where they are coming from genre-wise. With only a 30-minute set, they launched into “Seed of Death” and managed to power through half a dozen and a bit songs. I have to say I was well impressed with the lead guitar work on show and there was a particular segment of twin lead which was particularly captivating. I did feel that at times the drums could have been a bit tighter, but I’m pretty sure that nobody apart from drum nerds would have noticed this, and Nervosa had a great reaction from the crowd. The perfect warm-up.
You can’t help but state that Destruction raised the game a level. This was a real bucket-list band for me, having never caught them live before, and boy did they not disappoint. Teutonic thrash at its very best, with vocalist Marcel Schirmer’s distinctive rasp-that-morphs-into-a-scream vocals cutting the Manchester air like a scalpel. After opener “Curse The Gods”, the next song “Nailed To The Cross” had the crowd chanting the chorus and the circle pit going in a frenzy. Across their set, “Scumbag Human Race”, “No Kings No Masters” and “Bestial Invasion” were standouts for me. Destruction totally smashed this and the crowd responded accordingly.
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Obituary took the stage like a band who knew they had to be on top form to follow the set that Destruction played. And boy, did they deliver. Opening up with “Redneck Stomp”, this was a band on fire. The drums absolutely punched through the sound mix and that unique sludgy/crunch guitar tone that is Obituary’s trademark absolutely dominated the hall. One thing that stood out for me was that in a set that included tracks pulled from their latest release, Dying of Everything (“The Wrong Time”), all the way back to Slowly We Rot, every single track was total killer and the energy levels in the hall never dropped. Pits were swirling and crowd surfers were out in force. On a personal level, I just have to say that as an old-school Celtic Frost fan, I absolutely adore Obituary’s cover of “Circle Of The Tyrants”. Given how much of a storm this went down, though, it’s clear I’m not the only one! Overall this set was epic; Obituary slayed it.
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And still to come, we have Testament. Let’s face it, Testament are Testament. Chuck Billy prowls the stage like only Chuck Billy can, Alex Skolnick shreds like only Alex Skolnick can, and Eric Peterson is like the beating heart of the band, pounding out the riffs and trading solos with Skolnick. Steve Di Giorgio and Chris Dovas drive a tight, pounding rhythm section.
“D.N.R. (Do Not Resuscitate)” is the perfect opener – fast, thrashy and a crowd-pleaser – and “WWIII” continues the theme. “More Than Meets The Eye” has the crowd woah-woahing along. On a personal level, it’s mostly the old-stagers that please me most in the set, such as “Practice What You Preach” and “First Strike Is Deadly”, and yes, I was standing there yearning for some first and second album old-school cuts. However, “Infanticide AI” and “Shadow People” from their latest album, Para Bellum – only released that day – were real standouts for me amongst the set too. I could have done without the drum solo, though! Towards the end of the set, Chuck Billy told the crowd that they were aiming for a record number of crowd surfers. During classic set closer “Into The Pit”, the front of the stage was a wreckage of limbs and bodies and the pit a swirling morass. Glorious bedlam! Testament closed the show bang on curfew time to a tumultuous response.
Tonight, this was four bands totally feeding off both each other’s and the crowd’s energy. Absolutely electric and bloody brilliant.
