Obituary/Pest Control/Swamp Coffin –
O2 Academy 2, Sheffield, Saturday 9th September, 2023
So it's the 9th day of the 9th month of the year and it's as hot as hell! So how do you top this? Well you fill a room to complete capacity with a few hundred thrash-heads, turn off the aircon and watch every part of the place drip and ooze sweat that keeps on giving.
Starting off the night are a bunch of local sludge doomers who go by the name of Swamp Coffin and warm the folk up with their cookie monster bawls and down-tuned ditties of dark morbid pleasures. They travelled all the way from the paradfise of deepest Rotherham to be here tonight and no doubt have a few dozen fans in tow! They did good and performed to a solid thram of diehards and appeared to go down pretty damn well.
Up next are the female fronted Pest Control from Leeds who are definitely right there on the list of a band that could have come out of the heyday of the mid to late 80's with their perfect melodies, tones and arrangements to the bawly, growling, aggressive numbers that the folk in here seemed to be totally in love with.
This was supreme triple somersault styled quality with riffs galore that all and sundry got excited about. It was like the following decades never happened and you had instantly been transformed right back to the San Francisco Bay Area – wow – just wow! The crowd swayed and got insane at times as they moshed the f*ck out to their firmly found new favourite band!
Set List: Redneck Swamp/Sentence Day/A Lesson In Vengeance/Visions In My Head /The Wrong Time/Barely Alive/Slow Death/Find The Arise/Weaponize The Hate/My Will To Live /Chopped In Half/Turned Inside Out.
Encore: War/Dying Of Everything/I'm In Pain/Slowly We Rot.
Now when it comes to legends of old school, the headliners are most definitely up there. Who would have through the place would be absolutely packed to the point of feeling like it had been totally oversold to the absolute limit – many of us were in complete agreement that this gig should have been downstairs in the main room instead of a huge throng of fans packed in like rabid, energised sardines from hell!
The audience were teased up with Pat Travers 'Snortin' Whisky' before it went pitch black and dry ice filled the room from which four of the band emerged: Donald Tardy (Drums), Trevor Peres (Rhythm Guitar), Terry Butler (Bass) & Kenny Andrews (Lead Guitar).
They went forthright and dived into the much-loved instrumental 'Redneck Swamp' – yes the place went mental and rightly so too! Then Vocalist, John Tardy appeared onstage in shorts – well it was piping fucking hot after all! The place was even more alight at this point with steamy, greasy sweat filling every area available.
The security at the front completely earned their money grabbing quite a few who had surfed in and made it over the barrier with the Togs totally watching their backs and their cameras for all it was worth! Not to mention the wild moshing with bruises galore that was going on throughout the entire proceedings just about.
We received a good smattering of million miles an hour classics plus many cuts from the new album 'Dying Of Everything' interspersed all over the set that included the title track itself which completely matches their older bulging b*st*rds of bombastic speed and power in overflowing quantities with killer soloing, thramming bass and drums not to mention blood curdling ferocious vocal attacks!
Various highlights included the wrist-breaking 'Visions In My Head'; the lovely titled 'Slow Death' with its awesome stomping riff, the epic and ancient 'Find The Arise' with that screaming Kerry King like Guitar solo, the dismembering greatness of 'Chopped In Half'; the terrifying thrash classic that is 'I'm In Pain' and closed with 'Slowly We Rot' with utter fury and fire both off and onstage
It's little wonder they had to stop for a breather now and again between songs as I have never known temperatures like it in here before and maybe never will again – right in the middle of a heatwave with outside hitting around 29 degrees Celsius in September! I gotta say that it matched the heights and the levels of the intensity of these superior Thrash Metal Titans!
Steel City did itself proud and this is pure proof we need more bands of this ilk to grace Sheffield's Stages!
Review By Glenn Milligan
Photographs By Matt Cordwell