VITAL REMAINS have managed to draw much attention with their prime works during the early 90s but became big after the addition of his unholiness Glen Benton who took over the vocals and the sound production. Their latest release Icons Of Evil and the live DVD turned to be most successful a fact that brought the band to a North American tour.
As you probably realized I was more than happy when I found out that VITAL REMAINS have booked a Chicago date at my already favorite venue The Pearl Room.

When I arrived at the venue I realized that I was pretty late since the second band of the billing was already concluding their appearance. It seems that they have re-scheduled the time in order to end the whole concert the usual US time that is about 23:00 to 24:00. The band that I found on stage was named DEATH BY CORE (if I got it right) and featured a company of young boys who were in the mood of playing some screaming Metal core that was approaching the Nu Metal territory. Despite the fact that there was energy in their performance the band did not managed to satisfy the 200 metalheads (and definately not me) who were just watching them.

After some minutes, FOREVER IN TERROR were on stage. This band hails from Streetsboro, Ohio and have released their debut Restless In The Tides through Metal Blade Records. Unfortunately, their restless, powerful and jumping all around performance did not get through and I think I was one of the majority that night. It seems that the audience (and me) had came for some pure Death Metal and was not that interested in all this Nu_Core stuff.

All these sound core trends were after all forgotten as soon as MOSTROSITY have come on-stage. So, the band from
Tampa, Florida performed some Death Metal songs with a rather stationary on stage presence. In fact, only the new singer Mike Hrubovcak was the only active person during the bands performance who was moving up and down the stage trying to warm the audience that was left numb after all the core sounds. Firestorm and Spiritual Apocalypse that come from the band's latest album managed to give us some quality headbanging time and justify a small but energetic pit. Things got moving and a little bit more violent after during MONSTROSITY's second half of their setlist. After some stops at the bands prime works the Deathsters left the stage and us pretty satisfied waiting for the headlining act.

After half an hour everything was ready for VITAL REMAINS. The lights were out and the blasphemous intro Where Is Your God Now came from the speakers while the band was standing with their back turned to us. Icons of Evil was the logical continuation and the Suzuki-less lineup was in front of the almost 400 metalheads. If you are familiar to this band then you probably know that it features two lineups; one for the studio and one for concerts. That night in the Pearl Room we had Scott Wily (ZIRCON) on the vocals and two pretty young guys (sorry I do not know their names) to take over the drum and lead guitar duties. The lead guitarist did a hell of a job performing Suzuki's hellish shreds and seemed very focused on this (he did not get his eyes of the fretboard for one second). Scorn and Born To Rape The World came from the band's latest album with a loud and extremely clean sound. The audience responded to Wily's honest performance who established a pretty good connection with them. One of the concert's highlights was Dechristianize where Wily got an inverted cross and passed it to the fans in the front rows where headbanging was the main issue. VITAL REMAINS added Descent Into Hell from their debut album and Saviour To None Failure For All and Unleash Hell from the Dechristianize one.

Overall, this was a good night for all the Death_Black Metal fans despite the hectic start with the supporting acts. Of course, I and many others would prefer to watch the latest studio lineup with Benton on the vocals and Suzuki on the shredders.

(photos by me)

DEATH BY CORE

FOREVER IN TERROR

MONSTROSITY

VITAL REMAINS