Soilwork
Death Angel
Blender Theatre
New York City, New York
July 16, 2010
Soilwork and Death Angel just finished up their tour in the US along with Mutiny Within, Swashbuckle, and Augury – a mixed bag if I ever saw one! Mutiny Within is symphonic power metal, Swashbuckle is corny pirate metal, and Augury is technical speed metal from Canada. And the headliners Soilwork and ‘special guests’ Death Angel are from different metal sub-genres as well.
I was only able to catch Death Angel and Soilwork, but heard that Mutiny Within went down in a storm. Death Angel is my favorite thrash band from the Bay area – have been since the late 80s, and for my money they musically surpassed the likes of Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer a long time ago and remain better than those bands. Their songwriting and playing ability remains phenomenal, innovative, crisp and potent. It’s a shame they arrived on the scene three or four years too late or they would’ve been in the top tier of thrash metal instead of perpetually bubbling under. Anyhow, the band played a brief, but blinding set that canvassed their entire career to date, including opening with the immensely brutal “Lord of Hate” from their last studio release “Killing Season”, “Evil Priest” from their debut, “The Ultra-Violence”, “Buried Alive” from, again, “ Killing Season”, “3rd Floor” from arguably the band’s best and most popular album, “Frolic Through the Park”, “Seemingly Endless Time” from Act III”, “Kill as One” from their debut, and “Thrown to the Wolves” from their comeback album “The Art of Dying.” Only Mark Osequeda and Rob Cavestany remain from the original band with the Pepa brothers and Andy Galeon now relegated to the ‘former members list”, but Ted Aguilar, Will Carroll, and Sam Diosdado have brought a new, revitalized sound to the band that was evident as they pulverized the crowd at The Blender. Unthinkable, but their precision playing that is amply evident on their studio releases is as sharp in the live setting as well. These guys should be much, much bigger than they currently are!
Soilwork’s latest album is entitled “The Panic Broadcast” and they aired five songs from that album at the show. The songs are not that dissimilar to the likes of “Overload”, “20 More Miles”, “The Crest Fallen”, and “Stabbing the Drama”, all of which were played. Vocalist Bjorn Strid growls with the best of them and guitarists Peter Wichers and Sylvain Coudret shred. Soilwork is intense as are their followers. I don’t know, but I don’t see the appeal. To me, they come across like any of the countless other hardcore metal bands. Truth be told, in my opinion the wrong band was headlining this tour!