Lachrymator – Velvet Voodoo Dolls, Sugar Plum Dandy, Home, Skunkjuice, The Mighty Sturgeon, Camerons Way, Drawback, Slowpoke, Doom Nation at The Vertex – Review

Lachrymator

with Velvet Voodoo Dolls, Sugar Plum Dandy, Home, Skunkjuice, The Mighty Sturgeon, Camerons Way, Drawback, Slowpoke, Doom Nation at The Vertex
by Scott Hefflon
photo by Trevor Whitaker

As hyped, ahem, introduced by Sugar Plum’s skin beating Dandy, Lachrymator literally roared onto stage. For those of you who used to mosh to the kill-death-Satan sounds of Death, Obituary, Possessed, and the true death metal monster mosh of the late ’80s, why’d ya stop? These guys are still pounding it out, and well, too.

Rumor has it, death metal is making a resurgence. With the whole glam-gone-grunge thing (which is still just a fashion statement), I’m glad someone is tapping the horror vein beside White Zombie and a very few others. With Slayer doing movie soundtracks now (but Jesus, who isn’t these days?), I guess it’s time to dredge up some of the old macabre noise. With the mainstream stealing our alternative, the alternative must become heavier, more repulsive, and untouchable by the trend hoppers.

Lachrymator takes to an extreme. A crunch tuned low and mean, and subhuman growling is a nice evil change of pace. Lachrymator’s agonizingly slow pounding and their speed metal riffing got the pit whirling in all directions and the heartbeat of everyone racing. It’s funny how fun death can be. And how fast. The larger than life roars are the death comic splatter show for the disillusioned and twisted youth in the hopeful ’90. (Cough!) Don’t ever expect to hear them in an office lobby, or on classic rock stations in ten years. Catch them live if you’ve never had a dose of death metal, or if you have and have forgotten the time when “crunchy” described a raw, tuned low guitar full of Hell and Rage, not back to the Earth granola-eating vegetarian wanna be neo-hippies. Lachrymator eats meat. Rare… very, very rare.