Live Review: Vader - Rebellion, Manchester
7th October 2023
Support: Vomitory
Words: Dan Barnres
Photos: Scott Clarke
It’s a Saturday night and I’m back at Rebellion after my mid-week meeting with The Obsessed for a rather different kind of musical event: a Death Metal masterclass from Polish veterans, Vader, who’ve brought along a couple of their friends to make sure Manchester does not escape with its life.
Unfortunately, I miss Aetherian due to the show’s early start and a lacklustre performance from the England rugby team, meaning we didn’t box Samoa off as efficiently as I would have liked. Still, sport, eh!
Vomitory are blasting through their set as I arrive and Rebellion is jammed, a circle pit taking up space at the front of the stage, with plenty of participants. The Swedes are getting a hell of reception too, with the Manchester crowd treating them as though they were headlining in their own right. Combining buzzsaw Death riffs with slow, more measured crawls, Vomitory show depth and texture to their work, even adopting a classic thrashing sound reminiscent of vintage Slayer during closer Chaos Fury.
Although focused on this years’ All Heads Are Gonna Roll album, the band embrace the nostalgic milieu of the evening and have a walk through seven of their previous eight records; with only the Raped in Their Own Blood debut not getting a mention. Vomitory make no apologies for their adherence to the Death Metal ethos; songs entitled Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize, Raped, Strangled, Sodomized, Dead and Regorge the Morgue may well have something of the cartoon about them, but their out and out aggression links back into the foundations of the genre and the basic requirement to be excessive.
Huge double bass drums, filthy guitar tones and scintillating speed as required are the building blocks of any old school Death Metal band and Vomitory have it in abundance. There’s even a playful moment when drummer Tobias is hitting a cymbal between songs and the first bars of Iron Maiden’s Passchendaele comes from one of the guitarists.
Polish Death Metal Royalty, Vader, arrive like conquering heroes to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. Following the bombastic, jazzy, intro tape and the flooding of red light across the stage – much to the annoyance of the photographers in the room, no doubt – the band kick into what is billed as a journey through Vader’s history.
Kicking off with Decapitated Saints and following that up with back-to-back Chaos, Vicious Circle and Dark Age from The Ultimate Incantation debut shows Vader’s early sound was raw and shot through with more than a little punk attitude. Only The Wrath from their Necrolust demo in 1989 break this early attention to the debut, moving then into De Profundis, Black to the Blind and Litany material.
This way of experiencing Vader’s history is also a way of plotting their development as musicians and song writers. Silent Empire, Cold Demons and Back to the Blind’s title track all show a greater technical proficiency above the previous songs; riffs are fatter and more oozing, the guitars saw and the drums drawn out a barrage of artillery.
As they get deeper into the set and albums become more recent, we get a series of more casual stops on The Beast for Dark Transmission, Helleluyah!!! (God is Dead) from Impression in Blood and set closer, Triumph of Death from 2014’s Tibi Et Igni, all of which continue the extension of the Vader legacy.
Maybe would like to have heard something from Solitude in Madness from the most recent album, but that would be just my sense of a need for closure on the evening. I would have also liked to hear something from Welcome to the Morbid Reich, but that’s only because it is my personal favourite of their albums.
You could make the argument that Vader were late to the Death Metal party, with the hey-day of the first wave being all-but over by the time the debut was released in 1992; but the band’s focus on the themes and direction of Death Metal – at a time when it was deeply unfashionable – was (and is) to be commended.
So steadfast are they that it feels as though they have deliberately recreated the fetid humidity of a Florida swap here in Manchester. Though, to be honest, the unseasonably mild October evening is partly responsible for that, I think. Yet it’s impossible to hear Vader and not also hear their contemporaries from the Scott Burns production line.
Modern Death Metal is fine and all, but if you need a fix of the pure stuff, you just can’t beat going back to the source and Vader should, by rights, stand tall and proud in that category. Tonight just highlighted that statement.
All photo credits: Scott Clarke Photography
