Lineup: Intronaut/Entheos/Moon Tooth/Pathogenic/Merthius
Venue: The Palladium Upstairs, Worcester, MA
Date: July 23rd, 2016
Merthius: Arrived late and missed their set.
Pathogenic: I got into the venue during their last song, so I can't really assess their performance. From the brief portion of their set that I saw, they sounded just as solid as they did a few years ago when they were the local opener for the Worcester stop of Summer Slaughter.
Moon Tooth: Very nice kick-off to the lineup of touring bands. Their sound was a lot more technical than most prog metal bands out right now and their vocalist brought a unique, old-school metal flare to the proceedings. I'm definitely going to check out their recently released debut LP Chromaparagon as soon as possible.
Entheos: As I had just seen Intronaut on the previous leg of their headlining tour in March, Entheos was the top reason I was excited for this show. Their debut LP, The Infinite Nothing, is one of the best albums of 2016 so far and I was intrigued to see how their spastic brand of prog-tinged tech-death translated live. As optimistic as I was for their performance, they managed to blow away any expectations that I had for their set.
Like their studio material, the catalyst for Entheos' live performance was vocalist Chaney Crabb. Her vocal performance was phenomenal with her high screams in particular being an absolute thing of beauty for death metal nerds like myself and her stage presence established the set's blistering, insanely fun tone. Crabb is a special talent that elevates the chaos Entheos offers up into something really special.
Further sweetening Entheos' performance was the excellent setlist they put together. The group played a majority of the highlights from The Infinite Nothing including "Perpetual Miscalculations", "New Light" and "An Ever-Expanding Human" and the two best songs from their 2015 EP Primal ("Specific Meaning in a Group of Dots" and "Chemical Flashbacks".) To be completely honest, I can't remember the last time where I was this satisfied with an artist's setlist the first I saw them live.
The most surprising aspect of their set was how well they were received by the crowd. Their standing as a frantic extreme metal act makes them a pretty unconventional choice to tour with a pair of prog bands, but the crowd ended up greeting them with a level of enthusiasm that was about comparable to what Intronaut received. Seeing Entheos live was one of the highlights of my year so far and I'd love to see them again in the very near future.
Intronaut: Intronaut is one of those acts that I don't think I'll ever grow tired of seeing live. Every time you buy a ticket to one of their shows you know that they're going to kick ass and this performance was no different than the previous four times I'd seen them.
Like their last headlining tour, they played The Direction of Last Things in its entirety at this show. The Direction of Last Things is an utterly immense album that sounds even better in a live environment, so it was really special see them play from front-to-back for the second time. This performance wasn't quite as sharp as their March show at the Middle East Downstairs due to a murky vocal mix that rendered Dave Timnick's vocals almost completely inaudible, but the incredible musicianship and the sheer power and density of the material from The Direction of Last Things allowed Intronaut to overcome these issues relatively unscathed.
If you get the chance to, please go out and see this show (the tour runs through August 7th). All three bands are excellent and don't get nearly enough as much as shine as they deserve. Without question, one of the best shows and talent-loaded bills I've seen so far this year.
Scores:
Moon Tooth: 7.5/10
Entheos 9/10
Intronaut 8.5/10
Setlists:
Entheos:
Perpetual Miscalculations
Specific Meaning in a Group of Dots
New Light
Chemical Flashbacks
The Infinite Nothing
An Ever-Expanding Human
Neural Damage
Intronaut:
Fast Worms
Digital Gerrymandering
The Pleasant Surprise
The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing
Sul Ponticello
The Direction of Last Things
City Hymnal
Encore:
Core Relations
Milk Leg
The Literal Black Cloud
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