written by Sam Doucet
Black t-shirts peppered the landscape of South Osborne on the beautiful evening of May 10th as The Park Theatre hosted the latest edition of Manitoba Metalfest. The annual weekend gathering has been an eagerly-awaited occasion for Winnipeg’s metal community for many years — understandably, given its history of bringing in big-name bands to a city often overlooked on tour itineraries. It doesn’t take much to lure local headbangers to Metalfest — even if the lineup isn’t your scene, the festival’s raucous and jovial atmosphere is unparalleled. But this year’s iteration featured a few reasons for extra excitement.
Notably, the usually two-night affair grew by 50%, touting three an entire weekend’s worth of metal. Festival organizer Cory Thomas said that the bonus night was something of a happy accident. He explains that Baltimore’s Dying Fetus, originally slated to headline the Friday, had to alter their tour schedule and thus offered to play Sunday instead. While considering a potentially awkward Saturday-Sunday configuration, Thomas opted to take a risk and seek out another big draw and put together another full evening of acts. A winning gamble, as it turns out, with all three nights selling out in the blink of an eye.
With that arranged, that’s where I stepped in – as one of the hundreds of eager Metalfesters keen on taking in bands well-known and unknown to me over the course of an extended weekend.
With Metalfest being so jam-packed with touring bands, local talent was at something of a premium, but opening night featured the most of it. The first outfit to take the stage was Spectre, a newish five-piece playing the type of grooved-up old-school heavy metal that has often been featured in previous editions of the fest. It’s no easy feat to select the band that’s going to set the tone for the next three nights, but some middle-of-the-road NWOBHM cheese was the right choice to get everybody’s toes wet. Being the first band is often a thankless gig when it comes to crowd engagement, but the energy in the room was already quite high, and I sensed the openers were happy with the reception they got.
Up next was Saskatoon’s Untimely Demise, giving the Park Theatre faithful their first taste of the ripping, aggressive style that would define the rest of the weekend. Theirs was a more technical and thrashy offering than the death metal to come, but the beefy tone and pummeling drums were an apt omen. Their set was marked by a few technical issues, namely drummer (and performer of three sets over two days) Bryan Newbury having to stop a minute into their opening song due to unsatisfactory mixing. We were also treated to half a song without bass as a rogue cable decided to act up, but UD forged on admirably. Besides, a Metallica cover will always cleanse any awkward memories from earlier in the set.
Next up were locals and Metalfest veterans Endless Chaos, who wasted no time ushering in the blast-beating portion of the evening. The pace, technicality, and endless onslaught of riffs had the crowd responding in kind, with mosh pits consistently raging without the need for gentle reminders. As previously mentioned, death metal was – somewhat by design – the primary focus of this year’s fest. Thomas noted that death metal is enjoying a moment right now, with many up-and-coming bands borrowing liberally from Morbid Angel, Suffocation, and the like. EC’s sound combines elements from all eras of death metal, with a catchy hook and crushing breakdown around every corner.
The penultimate set of the evening was Regina’s Into Eternity, bringing a somewhat more highbrow metallic vibe to the evening. Seismic, brutal passages were interspersed with tremolo noodlings and neck-snapping tempo changes. IE has only released one album in the last fifteen years or so, so the strength of their repertoire relies to some degree on their audience being dedicated fans of their older material. That said, the dynamism and skill on display in their set were enough to keep the crowd entranced. Speaking as someone with little familiarity with their work, it was one of the unexpected better sets of the weekend.
The headliner for the first night was a slam-dunk crowd pleaser, the type of band that Thomas knew would make the extra day worth all the planning and hassle: the always raucously entertaining 3 Inches of Blood, storming through Winnipeg for the first time in way too many years. The Vancouver power metallers, recently revived after an eight-year hiatus, put a bow on the evening with over an hour of classic tunes, many of which were taken from their sophomore album Advance and Vanquish, whose twentieth anniversary they are celebrating this year. It doesn’t take a tried-and-true 3IOB to appreciate the spectacle they provided that night – their brand of fun-loving, swashbuckling power metal is the type to please anybody within earshot. Horns held aloft and voices raspy from hooting and hollering, the Metalfest faithful went home after night one.
Saturday night’s festivities began with the sole local act, black metal quintet Wilt. Black metal presents a curious quandary for a festival organizer. It’s undoubtedly one of the most popular subgenres, but its esoteric and sometimes deliberately alienating aesthetic can be at odds with the festive atmosphere that a genre-fluid concert tries to foster. Though some elements of black permeated other sets throughout the weekend, Wilt’s was the only true (trve?) black affair. They started with a very sombre, mood-setting number before turning up the heat and presenting us with their atmospheric and trenchant blasting material. Though a black metal set in that vein wasn’t the most obvious way to get the crowd riled up for the night to come, heads were banging, and a rousing appreciation for a hard-working local band was evident.
Sadistic Embodiment came next, with members hailing from all three prairie provinces, including local metal polymath Tyler Augusto as a last-minute hired gun on bass. Theirs was a set of modern death metal packed to the gills with progressive and brutal flourishes. An overly critical reviewer may say that a lot of the finer details of their performance were lost in the mix, with all members going full-boar with their individual performances. Still, the undeniable energy set the stage for what was essentially a non-stop procession of headliner-caliber bands after them.
Colorado’s Allegaeon took the stage next. The Centennial State has garnered a well-earned reputation in the last number of years as the site of many exciting bands, but these cats play a style that is quite removed from Blood Incantation and their acolytes. When their highly-praised 2022 album Damnum came out, I deemed that it was well-written but not really in my wheelhouse. I did, however, think that this was the type of stuff I knew would be tremendous to see in person. Reader, call me Nostradamus. Allegaeon’s set was an absolute ripper from start to finish. The speed and precision at which they tore through song after song of technically astute melodeath had me and countless others entranced. Frontman Ezra Hayes’ magnetic charisma and twisted bandleader-esque performance brought it all together. Oh, and dropping a straight-up flamenco number in the middle of it all? I’d have watched the same set ten times over and been entertained the whole time.
Whoever had the stage next would surely have a tough time following. Montreal’s Kataklysm certainly didn’t back down from the challenge, as you would expect from a band plying their trade for over thirty years without missing a beat. Their brand of mid-paced, groove-laden death has served them well over the years, and they delivered a set that featured cuts from all over their discography. Singer Maurizio Iaconno offered a considerable number of rallying monologues in between songs, sometimes verging on the bizarre and conspiratorial – along the lines of gatherings like this one being the last vestiges of freedom – but when you’re this deep into such a night of constant metallic stimulation, you just let those slide.
Another stalwart of the almost-progressive death metal heyday of the 90s came next in the form of Greek legends Septicflesh, who added a symphonic angle to proceedings. Their set was engaging, to be sure – bassist and singer Spiros Antoniou must have broken the record for praising a crowd’s energy. I was left a little disappointed that their keyboard parts were only provided as piped-in additions rather than from a live performer. This made a big part of SF’s unique sound seem a little perfunctory.
Bringing the curtain down on Night 2 of the festival were Polish death-groove darlings Decapitated, undoubtedly the biggest draw of the weekend for many. The razor-sharp guitar work of Vogg, the band’s only remaining member, led the way for their smoke-filled, hook-heavy demonstration. Possibly the highlight for me was the lack of in-between-song mention of the cringe-inducing “anti-woke” lyrics from their most recent album, Cancer Culture. Thank goodness they let the riffs do the talking!
All bands from this second night were not shy to point out the energy and passion on display in the crowd. Thomas adds that he heard a lot of the same comments from musicians after they played, some mentioning that the recent renovations completed at the Park Theatre contributed to the overall atmosphere. For many, it was our first time checking out the bones of Sidestage, a new venue set to open this fall thanks to the efforts of Thomas and Mobina Galore’s Jenna Priestner. Sitting right next door to the Park, this more intimate venue, still in its construction phase, was the site of all merch sales for the performing bands, freeing up lots of space in the front area of the main venue at the same time.
The third and final night of Manitoba Metalfest 2024 was the one I was most looking forward to, and it began with Winnipeg’s Tyrants Demise hopping on stage and delivering a blink-and-you-miss it set of deathcore-tinged death (which I know may seem like intentionally obtuse subgenre word salad to the uninitiated).
Scarcely a moment to breathe elapsed before the night’s slate of touring acts from around the world took the stage, beginning with Tokyo’s Kruelty, who’s taken the world by storm with their brand of shamelessly bouncy hardcore-soaked moshy death jams. Based on the hype, you’d think that Kruelty merited a spot a little later in the evening – and perhaps they did – but they bravely signed themselves up for an afterparty show at the Handsome Daughter later that evening. Racking up nearly two hours of bone-crushing circle pit-eliciting death is dirty work, and this hard-working quartet has embraced a near-constant touring schedule since the release of Untopia a year and a half ago. Their set was also notable in a different way – for being the only one across three nights and seventeen bands to feature a woman performing. I’m no mathematician, but that’s not the kind of ratio we should aim for!
The final trio of bands all hailed from the Northeastern US, with Cleveland’s 200 Stab Wounds taking the stage with a no-nonsense set borrowing from both the early 90’s beginnings of brutal death and more contemporary “caveman”-style stompiness. Not as concerned with the rest of the lineup with stage banter, they ripped through much of the contents of their debut album, as well as a few cuts from the upcoming Manual Manic Procedures. Their forty-five minutes on stage were another top-3 performance for me, delivered with a tightness and ferocity that belied their tongue-in-cheek aesthetic and overly gory lyrical matter. I expect big things from that new album and for them to rise beyond their Midwest peers in terms of critical appreciation.
The hype train kept chugging along with the festival’s penultimate set, provided by Maryland’s Full of Hell, chameleons of extreme subgenres and constructors of a prolific and growing discography. Though tastefully arranged feedback had punctuated songs throughout the weekend, FoH were the only ones to introduce harsh noise into their set, artisanally crafted by frontman Dylan Walker in between bloodcurdling screams over furious grindcore spurts. Collaborations with Primitive Man and The Body have shown that Full of Hell are no strangers to melding with other abrasive and inhospitable musical acts. But when given a stage all to themselves, they provided a focused and impassioned set that was so fast and furious that it almost defeated the moshers that still had energy.
Last but certainly not least was Baltimore’s Dying Fetus, a band that has in large part carried the flag for bands that survived the early 2000s low point of technical/brutal death metal and emerged on the other side with renewed vigour. With last year’s Make Them Beg for Death providing a large chunk of their festival-closing performance, the power trio brought an onslaught of razor-sharp songs that filled the room with an aggressive joy and movement that suggested that my fellow Metalfesters appreciated not only the last band but the whole of the weekend that had just washed over them. Like others before them, DF didn’t waste a lot of time on banter but let their impressive oeuvre tell the story. A mention must also be paid to whoever had control of the house music in between sets, particularly on Sunday, for blasting the Seinfeld and Friends theme songs on repeat in between bands and linking Dying Fetus’ last song with Kool and the Gang’s Celebration as we all filed out in a post-fest daze. Seventeen bands later, I think Cory Thomas can look back on this 150% Manitoba Metalfest with pride and consider that Winnipeg is more than capable of welcoming three nights’ worth of talent to South Osborne every year.