» Destruction 2009 03 06  
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Reviewed by JuuKun
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Special guest: Krisiun, Mantic Ritual
City: Worcester, Massachusetts
Venue: The Palladium
Date: 06 March 2009
Destruction setlength: 90 minutes
Krisiun setlength: 50 minutes
Mantic Ritual setlength: 30 minutes

Mantic Ritual

For a band based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania without their debut album even out at the time of this writing and the beginning of the tour, Mantic Ritual are doing well, having recently completed a North American tour in January as direct support for Rotting Christ, only to pick everything up and do it all over again with Destruction two months later. I must say that they fit in just a bit better on this bill. They play a fairly basic form of Thrash that really isn't much to write home about, but as a precursor to the madness to come they were a well chosen opening act.

Taking the stage without delay, Mantic Ritual came and delivered their by-the-books Thrash Metal, influenced obviously by Slayer and earlier Sepultura. Each member of the band was fairly active on stage, though perhaps restrained by the small amount of room given to them. They blasted through a 30 minute set fairly quickly, with the typical banter consisting of song introductions ("This next one is your typical Metal song, it's called Killed to Death"), announcing that they had new t-shirts on sale which they had just gotten in the mail today, and even mentioning that they had their debut album at the merch stand for anyone who wanted to buy it before the street date.

By the time they played Panic mid set they had made a few converts out of the crowd and a small mosh was formed as the front row yelled along the simple one-word chorus, but the activity of the crowd never really intensified more than that. While, as I've already stated, nothing to write home about yet, once they grow into their sound a bit more this Thrash quartet might just be a force to reckon with.

6 chalices of 10

(sorry, no setlist)

Krisiun

If you talk at any length about great bands that have come out of Brazil, after the likes of Sepultura and Sarcófago are mentioned, this trio is bound to come up. While I admit that I'm not as familiar with Krisiun's music as I should be, I was familiar enough before the show to know that they were going to be great.

I had no idea of the following Krisiun has, at least here. While I assumed they would get a good reaction, I never expected them to blow the roof off of the packed room like they did. Pits broke out in the center of the crowd, and the front row was a sea of banging heads. During the break between almost every song, the crowd chanted the band's name, answered with repeated thank you's from bassist/vocalist Alex Camargo. This band was definitely a great choice for main support, having worked the crowd into a frenzy in the 50 minutes given to them and successfully set everyone else for what was still to come, yet delivering well enough that those who had come specifically for Krisiun (and there were a few from what I saw) were able to leave completely satisfied.

8 chalices of 10

(sorry, no setlist)

Destruction

Here it was. The moment everyone had been waiting for - the "D.E.V.O.L.U.T.I.O.N.: 25 Years of Total Destruction" tour had finally made its way across the Atlantic and was set to annihilate Worcester. After around a 20 minute wait between bands, the lights shut off anticlimactically to initial cheers and chants until we realized that the band was still not ready. It seems Schmier has a new bass tech for this tour, and his first night on the job was only the night before this show on the first date of the tour! Considering how things could have gone, though, after a steady 5 or 10 minutes with the crew running around fixing a few things, it wasn't long before the band took the stage and immediately kicked into Soul Collector.

With only a few sound problems earlier in the set, Schmier made sure to make a few remarks concerning his new bass tech that I unfortunately can't really remember. Otherwise, though, the sound was near perfect (as it was for all of the other bands this night) for the type of music being played. He did say, though, that it was great to see such a response in a venue they had never played before and they promised to be back, saying (sounding very sincere) that he had had a very bad day beforehand and we had made his day.

If Krisiun blew the roof off the venue, Destruction (ahem) destroyed everything else. For an older band they refuse to show their age, still rocking hard with a ferocious energy. Heads banged, a mosh pit was maintained throughout almost the entire show, and there was a steady stream of crowd surfers and stage divers which, a few songs into the set, began to infuriate the roadies. Indeed, after about eight or so they start to run onto the stage and push every stage diver back into the crowd almost immediately after they regained their footing. The crowd was moving so much that after almost every song, those of us in the front row were asked to fix the positioning of the on-stage monitors.

Though the crowd reaction was a constant fixture of the set, it understandably intensified during the classics - songs like Bestial Invasion, Life Without Sense, Thrash 'Til Death, and The Butcher Strikes Back threatened to break necks and destroy vocal chords as the night progressed. The four song encore did nothing but strengthen this ideal, with each song back-to-back elevating the level of absolute madness on the floor up until Schmier stated "This next song is the last song of the night, and it is also the first song Destruction ever wrote," and proceeded to announce, of course, Total Desaster.

This show was perhaps one of the best and most enjoyable I've ever seen. With no bands on the bill even remotely resembling any genre with the -core suffix, there were no egos, no hardcore dancers, nor any fights (that I witnessed anyways). It was just a straight up, no holds barred Thrash Metal show that took absolutely no prisoners. One of my favorite bands, Destruction had one of the best sounds out of any band I've seen, every instrument and vocals fully audible, and this crowd was probably the most enthusiastic, the most intense, I've ever been a part of. Even the setlist was perfect, though Vicious Circle - The 7 Deadly Sins and a medley consisting of The Damned, Cracked Brain, and Reject Emotions were initially written on the stage setlists and not played.

9 chalices of 10

Setlist:

Soul Collector
Bestial Invasion
Devolution
Eternal Ban
Life Without Sense
Black Mass/Antichrist/Release From Agony (Medley)
Urge (The Greed Of Gain)
Metal Discharge
Death Trap
Thrash 'Til Death
Drum Solo
Tormentor
Invincible Force
The Butcher Strikes Back
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Curse The Gods
Nailed To The Cross
Mad Butcher
Total Desaster

Related links:
www.destruction.de
www.myspace.com/officialdestruction
www.krisiun.com.br
www.myspace.com/krisiun666
www.myspace.com/manticritual