Saturday night in Castro Valley was a morbid gathering of four ruthless underground metal acts. Sepsis, Spectre, Enshrouded and Mefitis all proved to be sinister sounding bands with plenty of malicious sounding recordings to appease a group of ravenous metal fans.
The show was held at a place called, The Shop, located just off of Castro Valley Blvd. This was a solid location for an underground metal show and although there was no massive stage with an over the top light setup and private dressing rooms for each band with bowls of brown M&Ms, the setting proved to be all that was needed for each band to deal out some devastating headbanging riffs. The crowd showed up in full support and throughout the night the audience was fully engaged during each performance.
Opening the show was Sepsis, an up and coming death metal act from Santa Cruz that dealt a fiendish assault of old school death metal. I thought the band played with a tremendous amount of raw energy to get people hooked right away. If you enjoy that corpse crushing old school style of death metal where the riffs coming at you like an axe wielding demon high on speed, then you want to check this band out. Plus, major respect for their drummer and singer who handled both duties quite well. It is not an easy task playing drums and then having to lay down some venomous death growls, but this guy seemed to be up to the challenge.
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Sepsis |
The second band of the evening, Spectre, would be performing live for the first time, and you would not know it once they tore into their first song. This Oakley based tech death outfit demonstrated blistering extreme metal talent by coming up with these scorching technical compositions. Usually for a band’s first show there is always going to be some nerves when taking the stage, however, I can honestly say that Spectre played with great confidence and the band sounded very tight. Definitely interested in hearing some recordings from them, because I liked their dynamic sound that allowed them to write these unique cuts of mind bending death metal.
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Spectre |
After Spectre finished, Enshrouded began setting up for their onslaught of diabolic sounding death metal. This local band does not perform that often, so I was interested in hearing them live especially after reviewing their debut demo. The band played with an unforgiving attitude and delivered their material in a vicious manner. All around the musicianship from each band member vividly stood out and together they conjured up such a ferocious selection of songs. From the intense blast beats and pulverizing rhythms to the hellish vocals that complimented the cranial crushing riffs, the band’s entire set flowed with a profound malevolent synergy. Definitely an act to I would recommend seeing live if you have the chance.
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Enshrouded |
The final act of the night was, Mefitis, a black metal group from the dark depths of the Bay Area. I thought they put together a decent set overall, even though I was having a hard time hearing the vocals due to the guitars and drums drowning them out. I will say that the drummer sounded extremely talented and in my opinion his playing stood out the most during each song. After the first song the band’s bassist and singer stated that they had backing tracks, but unfortunately due to technical issues could not use them. Even without having those backing tracks, I still believe they played a solid set. Sometimes shit happens and you have to make the best with what you have, backing tracks or not you play with that same amount of energy.
If you are looking for some impressive up and coming extreme metal acts to check out, all four bands I think proved to be rather gifted in the art of making blasphemous sounding extreme metal music. As of recent there are not as many venues available for extreme metal bands to perform, so I think the bands who played did a spectacular job taking advantage of the opportunity by giving the audience one blistering and devastating show.
Links to their bandcamp pages:
Mefitis:
thetruemefitis.bandcamp.com/album/emberdawn
Enshrouded:
https://enshrouded.bandcamp.com/album/sanctum-of-the-shadows-2019-demo
Sepsis:
https://sepsisdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/track/facial-deformities
Lack of venues for bands to play live is pretty much everywhere. Sad.
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