July 8, 2009 – The Underground, Calgary, AB
About 30 people showed up on this Wednesday night; caught between a cowboy and a hardened turd in the midst of the Stampede. Like many all ages gigs before, water was the beverage of choice downstairs in the Underground, making the upstairs Summit of Beer worth the hike. SWWAATS (Success Will Write Apocalypse Across The Sky) were first up, boasting many a churning riff, getting the sparse early goers a playground pit to fuck each other up in. The six piece put up a demanding front for being the first act on a tour of five. Abysmal Dawn, while being technically superior to the openers, really had to grind their gears to get people woken up. The death metal quartet seemed programmed to kill, carving out a notch with a butter knife to add to their tour accolades of Six Feet Under, Decapitated and Suffocation. Daath take modern death metal to a high tech, dance floor-esque place, but the songs will never be heard in Tantra on a Saturday night, with jean skirt wearing ass-floss blondes shaking their teeth. No, Daath is catchy in terms of metal – almost Rob Zombie like, but nothing a normie’s mind can unlock. Live, hardly any of the melodic know-how on albums The Hinderers or The Concealers is audible – what comes is brutality as a carpenter’s dream: nailed down tight. Abigail Williams are in some respect, headliners of the tour, but they were brought down to direct support somewhere in the middle of things. Maybe because they aren’t practically renting a house here like Goatwhore, who are having their fourth stop in Calgary in roughly two years (with a fifth this September with Obituary). Anyhow, a coven of witches couldn’t conjure a spell more potent than their accursed set tonight. Goatwhore were Goatwhore, the only difference being Sammy had more hair this time and looked a lot like the first part of their name. After the show, he was looking for the second…
-Ryan Dyer
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