Born of Osiris hails in a new genre of metal: Jonasmetal.  That’s right, inventing genres that they didn't even know existed themselves!  They were discovered and had their first album put out in 2007 at the ripe age of eighteen, but seeing them Friday night I would have bet half of them were sixteen and the rest nineteen, looking as dashing as the Jonas Brothers.  Only when I closed my eyes could I concentrate on their sound.  Truthfully, they did sound fairly good; their technical skill is obvious, but they need more time to distinguish themselves.  Reading about them and seeing words like "distinct" made me scratch my head, befuddled.  While they are all talented musicians, nothing about their music was distinct or isolated them from the crowd.  My hope: now that they have a following (of sixteen year olds like themselves), they need to get off of the trend train and make their own sound.  This could be my rage for missing Hate Eternal, because they somehow got billed below Born of Osiris and Unearth, but I speak the truth.  It's all constructive criticism, because they do have the chops to back it.  Find your voice, grow some beards, and break free from Jonasmetal!

February  6, 2010

Report, Photos & Drawing by: Lynora

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Nokia Theater
Times Square
NY, New York USA

Friday - December 18, 2009

BANDS:
Hate Eternal
Born of Osiris
Unearth
Cannibal Corpse
Hatebreed

Cannibal Corpse came on, no flare, no frills, just a backdrop, black stage and beat up black shirts.  They opened with the title track to their 2009 album Evisceration Plague. Between every song fans would yell out song titles, each name sounding worst then the last.  Four songs in fans were screaming various names when I heard one retort, “Just play all of them!”  Fans were hungry for Cannibal Corpse and showed me some of the strangest and most different pits that I’ve ever seen.  Corpsegrinder howled, “Try to keep up with me, you can try, but you’ll fail.” 

Here, in the presence of the darkest and purest form of death metal, let me paint a picture for you.  Visualize “Let them Suffer” coming out the amps, long hair handbanging all around you, blue lighting, Corpsegrinder doing windmills, just the darkest most simple feeling you can feel.  Now in between you and the pit there is a middle-aged woman, pushing fifty, wearing thick glasses with a dainty chain, a cream jacket, white blouse, and navy slacks.  Her hair was dyed light blonde, short, and styled like your grandmother’s.  This woman, who I will name Tess because it just feels right, I thought was there for Born of Osiris.  Perhaps she was there for the man who was with her in a skullcap jeans and t-shirt, but no, Tess had a secret up her sleeve.  Tess loves Cannibal Corpse.  How do I know?  Every time Corpsegrinder announced a song, she screamed and threw her hand up with such intense glee, and she clapped the second each song ended.  That is because she knew every song, that’s because my fifty-year-old secretary loves Cannibal Corpse.  Tess started out strong, holding her ground for “The Time to Kill is Now.”  But when pits broke out immediately next to us and I saw her wide eyed, I grabbed her arm and stood her next to me.  My hope is that Tess enjoyed her Cannibal Corpse show next to me, cause I enjoyed seeing her.

Cannibal Corpse is going down as one of my favorite live bands. “This goes out to all the ladies out there.” And a roar came form the men. “No!” Corpsegrinder bellowed, “It’s always a bunch of guys, I wanna hear the ladies,” he growled.  We screamed as loud as we could.  “Mmm sounds like twenty-five or thirty.”  He dedicated “Fucked with a Knife” off of 1994’s The Bleeding to the thirty of us.  He followed it up with “Make them Suffer” off of Butchered at Birth and “Vomit the Soul”, which was my favorite live. “Now, I want to send this song out to all the horny girls.” Corpsegrinder bellowed and only two or so or us cheered.  “I know you’re horny, I can smell it in the air.  ‘Fucked with a Knife’ was for the pristine women, and this is for the horny bitches.  ‘Priest of Sodom.’”  It was at that moment I decided: if ever I have offspring, will name my first son Corpsegrinder.  “Unleashing the Bloodthirsty”, which after seeing live, is my favorite Cannibal Corpse song ever. The pit would go until the refrain where everyone stopped what they were doing to bend over and headband.  The two pits would occasionally have holes open up in the walls and break into one large pit across the entire floor of Nokia Theater.  “If I see you standing around I’m gonna come out there and break your legs myself,” he screamed then playing the “last” song of the night, “Hammer Smashed Face.”  Just as it finished he picked the mic back up and said. “You know how I said that was the last song?”  He smiled and bellowed, “I lied!”  Their performance that night may have made them my favorite live band.

Cannibal Corpse

Decimation of the Nation Tour II - US Tour 2010

Hate Eternal, Hate Eternal, Hate Eternal.  Why? Why did they book you at the bottom of this list so that I missed you due to traffic?  I held my head and wanted to cry when the gentlemen said, “no they just finished… but hey Born of Osiris is about to go on.”  Next time I will melt the traffic with my laser vision and get there even earlier.

Unearth

The main problem that I have with Unearth is that while Unearth isn't bad it certainly isn't good.  The first time I saw Unearth was years ago at Hammerstein ballroom with Slayer.  What happened was: "oh man these guys are heavy, yea, that is a juicy breakdown riff, yea, I like that solo, yea, his voice is pretty sweet -Yea!"  By the end of the evening here's what it degraded to:  "What the hell, didn't they open the set with that same exact song?"  Well, couple that with the guitarist Ken Susi and you make for a band I'd willingly get into    screaming    arguments   over.

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Born of Osiris

I don't know how they have fans or a following with their repetitive redundancy, and Ken Susi.  I get it Ken: you have a fauxhawk, think you are sexy, and wear a tight necklace while kicking over your Mesa Boogie Amp *cringe*! Oh what’s that? Is that a guitar solo? Yeah! Finger tap triplets two times, damn you are so fast!  Oh what’s that, you’re pointing at the girl in the front row, making a finger in hole gesture, and then a pregnancy gesture and then a fart sound and baby spilling out gesture, ho ho, you are so witty and clever Mr. Susi.  I could literally go on a twenty minute rant but Unearth doesn't deserve the face time.  Period.

© 2010 Lynora Conti