The venue was the Metro, which is on the main street of Sydney, where tourists go, homies go to hip-hop clubs & drunken idiots bash & stab each other.
Then you have about 300 death metal heads lining up out the front & making the general public go :scary:
13 years ago MA played the same venue.
Due to it being such a long time since the last show, the place was packed and everyone got there right when the doors opened - mainly I’d say due to the high interest in merch!
Once in, the re was about a 30min wait to get to the merch table.
There were about 3 or 4 items on sale. 2 t-shirts, 1 long sleave & a hoodie.
First act was Infinitum.
I thought they were pretty good. Pretty standard Technical/fruital Death Metal. They were really stoked that they played to a nearly full-house, because everyone got there so early.
2nd support was Daemon Foetal Harvest.
These guys were your typical gore Death Metal. The vocalist had that old school Barnes style. The crowd seemed to be into them.
Then as was mentioned earlier, the sound hard-on bearer put on this techno stuff – hard house/gabba type stuff.
The audience actually seemed to not mind it. With some groups of drunk people dancing seriously & taking-the-piss too.
This went on for about 30mins. The crowd did seem to tire of it after that long. Then when we heard the drum check the crowd roared. Whether it was Pete or his drum-tech, we won’t know, because the curtains were closed. But everyone roared anyway.
A few chugs here & there (again, was it Trey or guitar tech?), a “check check“ (Aussie accent) then an intro began, which I thought sounded like the AOD intro, but I’m not sure.
The guys walked on stage & hit a note & drum noise and said “hello Sydney masturbated crackers!” and went straight into
Rapture.
From the very beginning Dave and the guys had this amazing energy, and the crowd was giving great energy back – and everyone could feel everyone feeding off the vibe. Dave mentioned this many times throughout the night.
The sound was superb I thought (as all Metro gigs have been for me).
They were tight-as-fuck, as I expected.
As soon as Rapture finished Dave said hello again & said how great it was to be back here then they blasted into
Pain Divine.
Dave was all in leather & studs & looked kinda funny – but heaps cool still.
He went on again about “being sorry for taking so long to get back to Oz” so they were going to work twice as hard for us!
They then went into
Maze.
Next came
Sworn To Black. Dave’s intros to songs were a little cheesy, but that doesn’t matter because they’re fucking Morbid Angel!!!
His stage moves too were a little funny. Like cock-rock moves, kicking the air a few times, asking everyone to clap & “Oi” along to certain bits. But they’re aloud, it’s fucking MA! And because everyone respects them so much everyone “Oi’d” back as requested.
Next came
Nevermore. This song is great, but seemed different from the footage that was shown back on 2.0… I remember an operatic bit (yeah?) but no operatic bit.
Dave kept giving props to all the old schoolers and that lead us into
Lord of All Fevers, which was followed by
Immortal Rites.
They then played the only track from B, which was
Fall From Grace.
Next was the classic
Blasphemy, followed by the most classic probably –
Chapel of Ghouls.
Now 13 years ago when I saw them play this song, at the same venue & everything Trey’s solo was amazing. He went for ages, and took it to some new level I’d never heard him do. After all the crazy shredding and scraping, he did some cool low sounds & soft delay stuff.
This time his solo was still awesome but much shorter & didn’t touch anything like I remember he did when I saw him years ago. Still a killer though!
One thing that was a bit cheesy, was Dave sung the keyboard choir bits. But everyone joined in (including myself) so it’s fine I guess.
Next guitar change and there was a cool synth track played. It sounded familiar but I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s a new track of Trey’s for I?
The guitar changeover made everyone know what would be coming up; we were hit with
Dawn of The Angry,
Where The Slime Live &
Blood On My Hands.
Next came, and I had a feeling we would get it,
Bil Ur Sag. Now at first I thought Dave’s still kicking arse, but then I felt what was mentioned on here – he wasn’t delivering it with the 200% that did for the rest of the songs. He even seemed to just mumble some sections of the lyrics (maybe the parts where it was too syllable-full?). I wish they did Nothing Is Not instead…
Then came
Domination which I had a feeling would be their last song.
It was, but of course the crowd chanted “Morbid Morbid Morbid!” and they came back out.
Dave thanked everyone again and they then went into the encore
God of Emptiness. Dave’s vocals in this were amazing – the deep evil rasp in the first half of the song was creepy!!
Then they went into
World of Shit which surprised me, as I thought they going to end with
God…. It ended with crazy solos & noise and drums rolling as expected.
They then sincerely thanked everyone (with body language only) and headed off.
It was great, but of course seeing they’re a band with 8 albums it would be nice to hear at least 1 track from each.
Now for the ‘newbie’. Thor ‘Destructhor’ was fucking awesome! His playing was totally up there with his predecessors. His solos were fucking awesome too, only one thing that I felt with his solos: his style was a little too close to Trey’s. But that I mean, he does a lot of Trey-esque dives, squeals & bombs amongst his own style of shredding & tapping.
Erik was so different with his solos compared to Trey it was refreshing to hear 2 such awesome players who soloed totally differently.
Anyway, that’s it really.
Fucking great show & I really enjoyed it.
I just listened to the recording – it sounds damn good – just soft. I’ll boots it & tweak it & get it up ASAP. It’s a public holiday here on Monday, so maybe I can do it all then.
I’m also about to upload the pics, that I took on my shitty phone camera. Not sure what easier to upload to here my home page area…
