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Live Reviews : Sepultura & Death Angel @ Metro Theatre, Sydney 19/05/2018

By on May 20, 2018

Image: Dakota Gordon
Words: Jake Wiffen

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Strap your bullet belts on kids cause Death Angel is about to destroy! Every neck within earshot of the Metro Theatre tonight. Bands like Death Angel are rare these days, with so much infectious groove married to breakneck speed riffs and on-stage charisma it’s extremely obvious why thrash metal once rained supreme above all else at one point.

Bursting through songs like “Claws In So Deep” and “Thrown To The Wolves” drives this Sydney crowd of maniacs into an almost all-encompassing pit that’s fucking heaving. Singer Mark Osegueda frequently tells the crowd between songs that they fucking love playing Australia and in particular Sydney. With tonight’s crowd, I can see why. The atmosphere is palpable, it feels like every 90’s thrash maniac has blown the cobwebs off their denim and dragged their arses down here to cause some havoc and the band are fucking loving it. Between almost every song the crowd erupts into a chant of “Death Angel” showing that Australia still has the ability to impress a band that has been everywhere.

Before Sepultura hit the stage I cram into the bar with everyone else to willingly get raped by beer prices and smile politely while it’s happening. As I walk back to the main stage I can see a slight shift in the crowd, more shirts are off and blokes are proudly displaying their 90’s full sleeve tribal tattoos. Some bloke reminds me that we all had that Sepultura tribal S carved into our skateboard grip tape. Man, looking back at shit like that reminds me the 90’s wasn’t so bad.

Sepultura hit the stage and from go to whoa they fucking crushing! Guitarist Andreas Kisser has the whole floor section in a frenzied state, the pit has taken over every available space. The band constantly reminds us of their Latin roots mixing rhythmic dance drums with crushing riffs forcing the crowd to flick between a circle pit and a good old-fashioned 90’s pogo. If I wasn’t so fucking psyched on the bands sound I’d probably laugh. I haven’t seen an Australian crowd response like this in a long fucking time and it’s well deserved.

Someone flicks a Sao Paolo soccer scarf on stage and Andreas puts it on promoting a soccer chant. Singer Derrick Green leads them back into a Sepultura chant whilst smashing his single stand Tom and leading the band back into a string of crushing tunes. Of course, they bring the house down with “Arise” and “Roots” leaving nothing out and not a single person feeling they hadn’t got their money’s worth.

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