I always felt bad that I could never see bands like Death or Pantera, for the worst of reasons, because of my youth at the time of these bands' careers sadly ending. While, as a reunion Pantera would never be the same without Dimebag Darrell, a reunion of Death would never be the same without the great Chuck Schuldiner, I was ecstatic to see Death's official Facebook page report that many of the surviving former members of Death would be playing classic Death songs touring together, and hitting New York while they were at it. I woke up early (for me..) on the day tickets went on sale to secure tickets for two friends and myself.
When the 28th of June finally came and we got to Irving Plaza in the city, Gorguts took the stage right as we got there. The sweatiness that would torment us throughout the night came quickly and never ended, but it didn't get in the way of the classic death metal... aside from "gear almost melting" towards the end of Death to All's set. Heat and sweatiness aside, Gorguts put on a pretty good show. I had tried to listen to a few songs by Gorguts before going, but could not get into them because they weren't melodic enough for me (I mentioned in my introduction post that I need my death metal to be somewhat melodic) - I would even consider Death to have been far more melodic than the Gorguts songs I tried. Despite that, Gorguts weren't bad at all and if for some reason they were opening for another show, I would not mind seeing them again, although this wasn't enough to turn me into a listener. I would give their performance a solid 7/10. I would have slightly preferred Atheist since I actually knew and liked some of their songs, but again Gorguts were by no means bad. The vocalist also was good with the crowd and thanked everyone several times for coming.
The remains of the mighty Death took the band in time, after a gloomy intro recording that came with the lights dimming. They started with "Zombie Ritual", which had recently become my favorite pre-"Human" Death song. The first vocalist had a deeper growled style than Chuck ever had, but it worked pretty well for the Death songs that he performed on. In time, the second vocalist, who sounded a bit more like Chuck did on The Sound of Perseverance, took the stage, but the band members swapped in and out throughout the night. This was my first time seeing Gene Hoglan on drums, and while the sadly injured Sean Reinert is an incredible drummer in his own right, the bass drums got furiously louder when Gene came on. One of my concert-buddies pointed out that they went slightly unevenly chronologically through Death's discography, playing mostly older songs first and finishing the pre-encore set with a few songs from two of my favorite albums of all time, "Symbolic" and "The Sound of Perseverance".
Death's songs were performed probably as faithfully as they could have been without Chuck, but what really made my night was when it was announced that Richard Christy, the great drummer on The Sound of Perseverance, and Alex Skolnick, Testament's lead guitarist and my personal favorite guitarist, would join the band, followed by the band with Skolnick and Christy playing two of my favorite songs from "The Sound of Perseverance": "Spirit Crusher" and "Scavenger of Human Sorrow". Skolnick joining the band for those songs may be my personal top concert moment yet.
The crowd was great and very into it. "Death! Death!" and "Chuck! Chuck!" were chanted, and the circle pits were about as great as they could have been at the venue. I was being a pussy as usual and stayed in the balcony, but I still had a great experience because of the great performances of classic Death songs.
I'm happy that I got to see Death classics played faithfully by an extremely talented "tribute" band. This was well worth it, even though the air conditioning apparently wasn't working the entire time. I'd like to thank Alex Skolnick as well as Eric Greif and, of course, the entire band for showing up, helping to arrange this, and putting this on respectively. I would give the performance a great 9.25/10. I can only imagine how awesome Death would have been if only it were led by Chuck Schuldiner.
R.I.P. Chuck Schuldiner. I was way too young when you passed to know about it, much less listen to, love, or appreciate your music, but your music, cheesy as it is to say, will live on, and personally Death are still in my top five bands of all time and have been for a while. Few bands have discographies as 100% consistently awesome as Death.
Set Lists (thanks Setlist.fm, I wasn't going to remember everything or the order)
Gorguts
1. From Wisdom to Hate
2. The Carnal State
3. Orphans of Sickness
4. Nostalgia
5. Stiff and Cold
6. Inverted
7. Obscura
8. The Erosion of Sanity
Death to All
1. Zombie Ritual
2. Leprosy
3. Within the Mind
4. Torn to Pieces
5. Left to Die
6. Suicide Machine
7. Lack of Comprehension
8. Flattening of Emotions
9. Secret Face
10. The Philosopher
11. Trapped in a Corner
12. Overactive Imagination
13. Bite the Pain
14. Zero Tolerance
15. 1,000 Eyes
16. Crystal Mountain
17. Flesh and the Power it Holds
18. Spirit Crusher (feat. Alex Skolnick and Richard Christy)
19. Scavenger of Human Sorrow (feat. Alex Skolnick and Richard Christy)
20. Symbolic
21. A Moment of Clarity
Encore
22. Voice of the Soul
23. Living Monstrosity
24. Pull the Plug
TL;DR
Rating: 9.25/10 (Death to All), 7/10 (Gorguts)
Personal Highlights: Spirit Crusher, Scavenger of Human Sorrow, Crystal Mountain, Overactive Imagination
Recommend: See!.. if they ever do this again
