CONCERT REVIEW: Exhumed - Vitriol - Escuela Grind - Castrator Live at The Meadows Brooklyn

With a Sunday night show to cap Thanksgiving weekend, veteran death metallers Exhumed stomped into NYC in support of their latest album “To the Dead.” (Read our review here.)

Despite my intimate involvement in NYC’s local metal scene, Castrator had somehow eluded me. I am used to attention-grabbing vocabulary in death metal, but my mind didn’t make the connection. It all made sense when the women of Castrator took the stage. The “explicitly feminist” international four-piece pierced the night with anti-patriarchal brutality. I loved the old school raw aggression à la Cannibal Corpse, but with the New York edge of Suffocation or Immolation.

I’ve known about Escuela Grind for awhile and been to plenty of grindcore shows, but never managed to catch the band until tonight. Even from the soundcheck, there was an invigorating energy shift compared to the OSDM band prior. The riffs were still sea-sickeningly heavy but with lurching speed carried by the thrashing vocals of Katerina Economou. The band delivered a punishing stream of short, sharp tracks that stayed true to their genre: reinforcing a sense of unity across all people through pulverizing music.

Receiving acclaim from death metal greats like Atheist is no small feat, but Vitriol has done it. Their extreme sound punctuated the night, with the surgical speed of the pounding double bass drum and bassist Adam Roethlisberger’s punchy tapping. Despite the heaviness of the rhythm section, make no mistake: this is a guitar-centric band. The eccentric trem picking and riffs stole the show. It may have seemed like the wall of sound streaming from Kyle Rasmussen’s guitar was causing the man to vibrate but it was actually the other way around: his angry cathartic energy powered the sonic warfare.

Exhumed is known for theatrics. The self-proclaimed horror fanatics signaled the start of their set with a suffocating amount of fog. A bloodied chainsaw-wielding doctor and a nurse took the stage to greet the crowd. Two televisions on wheels, eerily reminiscent of my 90s public school days, displayed gruesome surgical scenes. I was already sensorily overwhelmed when they pummeled me with the first song and lead single, “Drained of Color.” They followed with more new tracks like “Rank and Defiled” and “Carbonized.” Though the songs are new, there is a certain nostalgia. It’s clear the band has carved a home in the deathgrind genre, sticking to cutthroat drum speed and melodically infectious hooks. Ross Sewage on bass and vocals brought grisly lows to complement lead vocal Matt Harvey’s screeching highs. The setlist was a highly-curated full package of sights and sounds that made Exhumed an act not-to-be-missed.