Review by Matt Lewis; Concert photos by Albert Mansour
Another metal show at Club Absinthe in Steeltown, tonight’s lineup consisted of new and old and featured Baptized in Blood, Deathpoint and local punk legends Sector Seven, who are in the midst of making a comeback. When I was in high school Sector Seven was huge around here. They had a video on Much Music that was played all the time. I was 16 or 17 at the time I think when all this was going on way back in the late 90’s and then they disappeared. How shocked was I to hear they were opening the show and they had a new album coming out! Okay, maybe I laughed when I was told but let me say that older doesn’t mean worse, these dudes still got it. Playing a mix of old punk material and new thrashier songs they were fun to watch and loud as fuck!
Next up was another local band called Deathpoint. A modern metal band with influences from Arch Enemy, Chimaira and other bands of the genre, this band was pretty goddamn average. Nothing surprised me, nothing caught my attention. Actually that is not true, the clean vocals were off key and the vocalist had a hard time with it. This band was heavy on the duh duh duh duh…duh duh duh.
Next up and final band of the night was one of Roadrunner Records’ newest acquisitions, London ON’s Baptized in Blood. The crowd had reached its peak just before they hit the stage – all 60 of them – but what the crowd lacked in size they more than made up for in energy. As the group started in with an older song, the crowd started feverishly head banging and singing along. The band fed off this energy and played an enthusiastic set, playing a couple old songs off their older indie release as well as a bunch of new songs from their just released self-titled album on Roadrunner. You could just feel the lack of fun in these new songs. They were less glam and old school thrash influenced, instead these new tunes unfortunately sported a more modern style sound. Although I didn’t really like the new stuff, they ended their set on a high with the crowd favourite “Down and Out”.
I will have more to say on the new Baptized In Blood album shortly; my review of their new album will be published here on Hellbound very soon.
