Hatesphere + Augury + Obscura + The Black Dahlia Murder – March 12th, 2010 – Denver, CO

The first stop in our road trip across the country was at Denver, CO, so we tweaked our travel dates in order to make it to this magnificent show that offered us the opportunity to watch some great bands in a small venue, something that probably will not happen in the future.

While we are followers of Hatesphere, Augury and Obscura, we never cared much for The Black Dahlia Murder and their Death-core music. So we basically attended this show for the foreign talent.

We got to the venue an hour or so before doors opened in order to do interviews with Hatepshere and Augury. Since Hatesphere were doing their sound check when we arrived, we managed to sneak a peak into how the band sounds live. First thing we noticed is that the sound at the Marquis is pretty bad. There is some weird ‘artistic’ divider thing on the ceiling that cuts off the acoustics terribly, this added to the raised wooden floor on part of the venue and you get as much vibrations as a tuner car blasting hip-hop music has.

During our interview with Hatepshere (check it out HERE) we were interrupted by the backstage Nazi, that kicked us out because we did not ‘cleared’ our presence through him, so this ego tripping douche kicked us out even if the band we interviewed said we could hangout with them on their dressing rooms.

Anyways, after the whole asshole behavior and a ‘in the van’ interview with Augury (listen to it HERE) the people finally started to go inside the venue and it started to get full pretty quickly. The show was sold-out and the capacity of the venue was supposedly 500 people, which seemed a bit ridiculous for this small place.

We got our tickets and photo pass from the will-call boot and a very friendly and helpful bouncer explained to us from were we could take pictures with our photo-wristband, and it was basically the same as not having one, except it allowed us to take our camera inside. So for the majority of the bands we only have extremely shaky video of their performances (except from BDM which we could not even go through to the restrooms during their set), we apologize for this but after getting thrown into the mosh pit a few times and several terribly shaky pictures, we decided to not risk our camera and ourselves and just take video instead.

Hatesphere took on the stage very early in the night, but quite a lot of people were already all the way to the front. This Danish band recently lost the vocalist before their tour but found a very suitable replacement and here they are; ready to rock the American audiences.

The band’s sound is mainly based on Trash Metal and they give a better live performance than on CD in our opinion, featuring the ex-drummer from Mercenary, the band’s sound was massive and brutal since the first song. Being the first opener, the band only got 30 minutes of stage time, but they made a solid impression with all the crowd and people started moshing and going crazy, very early in the show. While the band probably does not have a huge American fan base, we are pretty sure that after this tour this numbers will be growing considerably since they managed to impress most of the crowd.

We do admit that we were not big fans of the band’s studio stuff, but after seeing them live we will re-consider and re-listen to their efforts.

Videos:

After a short break, it was time from Augury, from Montreal (Can) to take on the stage. We have been quite intrigued with the albums released by this highly experimental band, since they manage to fuse brutality, technical music and melodic music all into a big pile of Metal soup. You can listen to all the progressive influences as well as some Black Metal (a la Emperor) influences clearly.

This band seemed to have more pull with the local crowd and many people just attended this show to watch them perform live. We have never seen them live before, and this was quite a rollercoaster ride. Starting off very brutal and then going into their own musical madness featuring instrumental passages, the band surely blew us and the rest of the crowd away.

Augury played also 30 minutes, which we felt were not enough since their music is so complex and demands longer stage time to case of bigger effect on the people at the show.

Videos:

After Augury’s brilliant set, Obscura from Germany was up. We were blown away by their latest release “Cosmogenesis” last year and it was amazing that we had the great opportunity of watching them live. Their technical Death Metal is both brutal and amazing.

The band had 45 minutes to blow people away, and they accomplished this with the first song of their set. The band plays their songs live EXACTLY with the same brilliance and skill as on their album. This is something we look for in technical bands playing live, and Obscura is probably one of the best we have even seen.

The band ripped through most of the songs of “Cosmogenesis” and a few songs from their older (and also brilliant) album “Retribution”. We think that Obscura is one of the best bands in the genre, and they play their amazingly technical music without compromising on the whole ‘brutal’ aspect of their sound, making them a very well balanced band that can appeal to fans of both sides of the spectrum.

Overall, their set was the best of any of the bands in the night and we can’t wait to have the opportunity to watch them again live.

Videos:

Next up was The Black Dahlia murder, we have seen this band a few times before and there were never anything ‘that impressive’. We made our way out front for a smoke and when we came back we could not get anywhere close to the stage or even half-way there. So we quietly stood in the back just listening to their un-inspiring music.

Out of all the people in the show, we think that 80% of attended for BDM and they seemed very happy with what they got, for us it was like listening to the same song over and over with some basic riff and structure changes. Nothing worth mentioning much, but most kids (yes people between 16 and 20) seemed to really enjoy their performance. For us, it was time to leave since we drove 10 hours that day and wanted to rest up before our next show.

Thanks to: Nathan B for hooking us up with our credentials and to Francois the tour manager for arranging the interviews with both Hatesphere and Augury.

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