[Gig Review]: SANGUISUGABOGG/ PEELINGFLESH (us) + Supports @ 170 Russell, Melb (AU), 14.06.26.
Sunday night was our fifth day straight of conducting Gig Reviews, with myself at the helm for three of them. Being a Sunday, a miserably wet one, and still feeling the pinch of my back muscles that completely gave out on me whilst moving house Friday evening (right before Origin in Melbourne, boo!) - safe to say I was feeling a strange, melancholy mix of exhausted, excited, anxious, fatigued and more on entry into the bowels of 170 Russell’s dungeon-like descending stairs.
Thankfully, proving my media-accreditation patronage via the door list was far quicker this time. I learnt en-route that our assigned photographer wasn’t able to make tonights’ show, thus there was a smidge of additive pressure weighing on my mind. That pressure felt a little more threatening as I navigated the tight corridors that seem to errantly split off into bathroom here, stairs there, into an already quite-crammed expanse of the stage and pit-floor proper.
Like the Poison The Well show here last Thursday, tonights’ show was sold out (as was their second, both in record time) and thus an incredibly dense, loud packaging of human sardines. The acoustics in here literally reverberate with chatter, especially when you’ve got what feels like half of Melbourne’s band-shirt wearing demographic.
On paper and all the above considered, I was still appreciably excited. Buzzing, even.
I’d seen openers Gutless countless times, even having recently reviewed their support-slot set for Exhumed at Stay Gold the week prior (link here if interested). There’s a whole crop of local acts that seem to merge and meld themselves onto lineups or regularly coagulate on their own bills - Mammon’s Throne, et al. Gutless regularly prove their namesake ill-fitting in comparison, with the blokes thoroughly well-versed in the Melbourne environment and local/regional/domestic touring proper.
Their set starts with a raised eyebrow, from me. The LCD (at least I think it’s LCD? Don’t hate) digital display flickers in deep red-and-black, the lights dimming. That’s an unfamiliar and spuriously-cool enough sight, but what’s briefly caught my eye is the sea of elbows jostling past for a merch line that ran the entirety of the venue’s span. It’s no arena, but it’s also no Worker’s Club either. Folks are absolutely fiending for a spot at one of Sanguisugabogg’s comical/self-referential or plain ol’ gore-splattered shirts, but all heads are turned stagewards as the first thick, vomitous wail of HM-2-soaked distortion and warbling leads brings the old-school kicking and screaming to 2026, to June 14th, to this stage.
Mark Caldwell is an interesting one for Gutless’ frontman. Long strawberry-blonde hair and average in build, he’s not the archetypal image I have in my mind around slamming death metal supports. My face curls into a bit of a knowing grin as I feel the aura of ‘pfsh, okay’ type energy emanating off some unknowing suspects. Then the bloke gnarls out his guttural, throaty and bilious streams of baritone bile, shutting up the leery defensive punters not yet knocked off their socks by an immediate barrage of headbanging, windmilling, riffage hearkening as much to early 2000s death-thrash as classic Cannibal Corpse/Morbid Angel, and an unruly stream of detuned muck streaming into the cochlea like poisonous treacle.
I could take the easy route and simply ChatGPT this, copy/paste from my previous set. But, like Leary and the psychedelic movement warned to unaware suburbanites experimenting with plants in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s - set and setting are highly important. The additive stage-room and imposing PA setup give the band a gnarly, cavernous presence a smaller venue like Stay Gold simply can’t provide by physical nature itself, and the boys are sounding huge.
“‘Scalpel Obsession'!” one punter hoots over the rapturous applause after our evenings’ first toasty face-melt. The first of many. If this were an anime and I was some smug antagonist, likely the grin I’d be sporting as thankfully-not-an-anime-character me would look similar to that pre-encounter devilish grin that’s so often dramatically flashed to a series’ hero.
Intimate knowledge of the bands’ limited discography isn’t a requirement of entry, though. These gates aren’t kept; if anything, riffs of all death metal canonical flavours and eras batter at the gates to our auditory inputs like battering rams during a siege.
“Now you’re fucked!” Caldwell screams. Good, I think to myself, keen to cop more from a band who doesn’t even have to take you to dinner beforehand. Charge the card? Nope, these guys are charging you with an endless assailment of serpentine riffs derived from much historical death-metal plunder. Ensuring this isn’t just a Last Days of Humanity style wall of muddy power-chords, both Tom and lead-guitarist compatriot Allan Stacey throw in a plethora of trilling flourishes, blazing leads and the odd classic-metal leaning solo.
The lead refrains pierce like stabs out of the muck, an almost imperceptible din fed largely by the glass-gargling fuzzy rumble of Joe Steele’s potent bass tone. With our second number offering everything rhythmic from flat-stick OSDM d-beat, swingy triplets and crash-heavy, up-tempo breakdowns, Ollie Ballantyne knows how to effortlessly orchestrate the pits’ maddening push and pull. As with every other Gutless show, there’s plentiful perching knees on foldbacks, windmilling, swivelling headbangs and all manner of other movement. Needless to say, the pit’s following earnestly in kind.
A creepy quote and some more of the John Carpenter-esque synth that haunted the dimly-lit introduction creeps back over a warbling quote offering the most uneasy of assurance in the momentary silence: “Don’t worry; this only hurt a lot.” Our third gristle-laden offering feels plucked purposefully for place on the lineup, and the crowd eats up the choice select like pit-seagulls squabbling over a chip of floor-space. It’s already getting pretty damn hectic in here, and the chunky Bolt Thrower mid-tempo stomps, frantic Stacey soloing and stern, O-faced barking roars send the place off in a wall of crushing, grooving mayhem.
On and on it continues much the same as before, tracks like ‘Nobody Returns Alive’ a blistering fire-storm of stop-start dynamics and riffs torn from playbooks like a death-metal hoarder collecting riffs instead of stamps. Numbers like ‘Viral Infection’ and ‘Carved Into Existence’ contrastingly burst through the gate with dual tremolo immediacy, laying down a true extreme metal assault as writ law in tonights’ cave of slamming death. Watching the critical feedback and live reception for cuts from brilliant 2024 debut LP High Impact Violence feels like another layer of vindication tonight, proof that a strong current of love for OSDM runs through the cheering, hooting gallery of nasty-music fiends present.
No fanfare, no extensive and no big rock-and-roll cymbal-heavy ring-outs - the set ends as violently and abruptly as its’ inception, Caldwell and band mid-whirl as he screams “OOOOOOOOOOOOOOaaaaargh! That’s it.” The band turn and unplug in a sea of hollering applause, their mission succinctly and effectively achieved.
Several punters who absolutely must have a head-cold by now amble past, drenched head-to-toe, one nursing a cut above the eyebrow, all alongside myself and others more than keen to escape the balmy sauna created from half an hours’ feverish pit-activity and packed standing.
Never one to eavesdrop deliberately, as I’m stood outside exhaling tinned digital-USB cancerous death (potential goregrind band name in here somewhere?), I can’t help but overhear more than a few “holy shit, who were those guys?!” gasps of exclamation as the sardines unfurl onto the street. Perfect place to imagine another one of those tsundere black-haired guys in a coat or suit, the camera suddenly panning to that upturned grin.
What I wasn’t expecting, to be frank, was exactly how goddamned brutal Peelingflesh would end up being. Quoting Sascha Baron Cohen as a send-up of Kazhakstani reporting abroad: “Oh WOW wee-wa. Great success!”.
Was I expecting poor performance? Nope. Was I expecting a string of needlessly long verbal diatribes? Nope. To be frank, whilst their recorded material is appreciably heavy to the point of being brutal, it’s all leaking from a corner of the death-metal/grind/slam coagulated mass that I spend not that much time lapping up. I’ll happiily chuck on some ‘Bogg, Abominable Putridity, Pathology and the like, but I find my inclinations often heading to thrashier, techier or just plain weirder dimensions.
Knowing innately that these guys come with a similar appreciation for being magnitudes heavier live than even their recorded stuff, I thought I had my own expectations in check and pretty aligned to those sentiments.
Yeah. See - this is why we go to shows. Nothing beats the visceral nature of the Real Deal, in person and HO-LY HELL do peelingflesh personify ‘real deal’ in numerous nasty, booming, eat-shit-and-die ways.
Striding onstage with the gangster swagger of some early 90’s West Coast hip-hop act about to whip out the ‘gatt and pop fools, PeelingFlesh are collectively sporting a near-cartoonish grin of anticipation (lot of those tonight), sadists absolutely brimming with imminent schadenfreude. The rule of street law permeates the introduction and throughout the set, seeping into every aspect of the bands’ performance and persona - full of hood-swagger, hip-hop/soul/dance and other scratchy musical samples melding with some fantastically-ghetto sampled quotes.
Demonteal Harris (also referred to as ‘D’ or ‘Hazy’ by nickname) is all swinging shoulders, imposing size and barrel-arms raised into clenched fists. “You ready with me Melbourne?!”, he shouts above the clamour of our thundering applause. We don’t even get the chance to indicate our preference in that respect, they just kick off and we follow suit with the same immediacy.
Like, when I say kick off? I mean it. I’m posted up just askew of one of the two large visually obscuring 170 Russell pillars, over the right-hand side. Got to be at least two-thirds of the floor-space behind and a few feet off that blocky but necessary engineering annoyance.
Even from there I can still feel the domino push-pull of us mere standees bowling over slightly and righting ourselves. Reflexive looks to the source of the sudden threat signal indicate a mess; the circle-pit is a gangly sea of limbs and rushing bodies. Like birds near a hunting rifle crack, the audience scatters into feverish motion, amped up by D’s endless pit-commander jabs and those guttural, belching, impressively gnarly and deep growls.
Mark from Gutless has a low enough vocal register to make bats fall out of the sky; Hazy’s feels like a subsonic pulse from the bowels of Hell itself. Truly monstrous, belching and enough to make any goregrind lover reach for a pillow to place over their shorts whilst sat on the couch. Very impressed with the sheer ferociousness of those vocals, and there’s a few select solo belches tonight that earn whooping cries from all of us.
It’s gurn-inducing enough to watch that madness, let alone Mychal Soto and Jason Parrish punctuating the usual chug-chug-and-then-some slam template with all manner of clever tremolo runs, endless and rapid pinch/artificial harmonics, etc. Recent band addition Chip Smith brings incalculable sonic weight to the already disgustingly-beefy mix, thudding with cybernetic precision alongside the clashing, clamoring roll of experienced extreme-metal drummer Joe Pelleter.
The most Australian “Phwoooooaaaar!” gasp of exasperation emits involuntarily from myself and other disbelieving witnesses, as the Bring Back That Cataclysmic Breakdown Back (But Slower). As the tempo slows, the bands’ total spinal, neck and head range of motion increases even further, us along with them, the whole room looking like we’re being folded in half and sprung back again like chairs as the barrage hits. ‘Bed Bath Body In The Basement’ snaps to a sudden finish, and we collective humans boom in a rapturous applause. You’d think evangelists were in here, not street-smart slammers and their black-garbed devotees (the former would be horrified - good).
There’s just so many little moments between the stupendous heaviness that give this set a nice garnishing, too. Here’s one: As that track finishes, suddenly there’s Mariarchi-band styled world music with wailing trumpets, then there’s a sample of some dude talking about being a rainbow n-word, then proceeded by a slimy, filthy, guttural section of belching slam that brings The Day Everything Became Nothing firmly to mind. You could pop these guys in front of the most jaded extreme-metal neckbeard elitists and guaranteed, they’re going to find plenty to enjoy here.
And then we go full 1999 Slipknot self-titled as DJ scratching permeates the PA over slow chugs (catch a glimpse of that here via our Youtube channel), D boasting that “this one’s a crowdsurfing song. Grab someone, pick ‘em up, get em going - LET’S MOVE!” he roars, endlessly pivoting his whole body standing upright to head between toes, a motion he somehow keeps up the whole set. My back cricks in sympathetic horror just watching it.
By the commissar’s command, so it shall be done within the pit. The front is now a constant carnival of flaying, pinwheeling bodies being shuffled right into the arms of security guards frantically trying to catch ‘em all. Both D and the guitarists relish in it, firing off both satisfied grins and quick mic quips to those headed over the falls.
“Hah-haaaaaah! Yeah!” D exclaims between songs, prompting another bevy (pun intended) of cheers-ing from us. The banter’s thick across the set - everything from your requisite thanks, humility and love for discovering Australia, song dedications (Algor Mortis and the Melbourne hardcore scene being at least two) to the incessant jabs to “Move!”, at least half the bands’ engaged in constant MC-ing at any given point.
Another one: D bellows a cheeky “Show us who’s the sickest cunt in the room!” right at the apex overlooking a huge, grinding breakdown, garnering both laughs and hooting applause. Oh, by the way, the breakdowns these guys are pulling off are huge. Leviathan. Bigger than the Bogg’s, bigger than most. Just stupendously gurn-inducing, often either peppered with double-kick clack, blasts or just a tempo dial-down that earns a lot of involuntary exclamations from the crowd.
Clanged like a goddamned bell. Time after time. Didn’t realise we were filming the goddamn sequel to Rocky in here, but if this keeps up I’ll sound like Sylvester Stallone thanks to the skull rattling, vibrating and just about imploding.
“From Oklahoma to Melbourne…and now we’re here. There’s a lot of fuckin’ people in here!” our choreographer and lead belcher remarks, continuing by expressing gratitude, disbelief and thanks to punters for selling out 170 Russell and indeed the entire national tour. Naturally, this earns a brief patriotic applause.
Like Gutless before them, there’s little wiggle-room either provided to the band nor taken for whimsical speeches, soapbox rants or anything of that sort. It’s just wall after wall of relentless grinding, slamming riffage and screams, packaged in a way that feels like a fun punk-rock gig.
The rest of the set feels as tightly choreographed as it is deliberately chaotic. From a between-songs sample of a dude strumming on an acoustic quipping “I love you, bitch - I’m never going to stop loving you, bitch!” through to the intensely goddamn brutal dual vocal attack of Algor Mortis’ CC who joins D onstage to double the belching baritones and piercing shrieks, it’s just about head-exploding. And so much goddamned fun.
Believe it or not (brevity is not a skill I possess), I had way more notes than this on the ‘Flesh’s set. I am so thoroughly impressed by these guys, and you can tell there’s a lot of onus from their perspective to really bring it to each night of the tour. The hype’s warranted. These guys are fantastic and I’d see them headline another Aussie tour in an Oklahoma minute.
It’s time for a repeat of bad habits disguised as ‘getting fresh air’ (hardly, when you’re sucking down gaseous death with fruit-juice flavouring) as half the venue trundles out in disbelief. There’s no scattered murmurs of excitement about me this time - everyone is gasbagging ad-nauseum about that set. Being Australians and metalhead Aussies at that, the ambient feedbacks’ as expletive-riddled as it is loudly enthusiastic, earning some fun looks from unknowing passers-by taking a further step around us puppy-dog punters doing verbal zoomies.
Having caught the ‘Bogg on their last tour, I’m feeling a two-pronged and almost overwhelming excitement, as PeelingFlesh-induced adrenaline mingles with both anticipatory anxiety and giddy excitement. I realise it’s the most energised and alert I’ve felt all day. It’s cold and wet. I’ve been burnt-out and anxious. Weirdly quiet street. There’s the odd DoorDash guy on a bike or wary-looking pedestrian in a heavy coat. It’s Sunday. Folks are grabbing fast food for hangovers, roast with families, kick-ons for FIFO’s, whatever. And yet late at night, on a day I was so exhausted on setting food inside 170, I’ve been able to catch brutal slamming death metal and OSDM? It’s been so good that it feels like a Friday night, which is a great counter-reaction to the usual mild ‘oh god it’s almost Monday’ Garfield-ian fear that lives within us all.
Here to pummel everything from your Mondayitis through to mid-week hump-day and beyond, strides our slamming brutal death metal behemoths. Finally, it’s time for Columbus, Ohio’s slimiest and chunkiest riffers to make an entrance.
Like Demonteal before him and seemingly almost prerequisite for fronting any good slammin’ outfit, vocalist Devin Swank is an imposing figure. Muscle-bound, prowling to the centre-stage like one about to leap onto unsuspecting prey, he’s flanked by former-bassist-now-guitarist Drew Arnold, and former-drummer-now-guitarist Cody Davidson. To have your rhythm section repurposed onto guitars is an interesting but always sound tactical choice; if anyone’s going to nail dynamics, timing and ensure smooth coordination with their rhythmic replacement (for this tour, Eric Morotti of Ablation, Piss on Christ, ex-Suffocation et al), it’s these two. “Let me hear you make some noise!” Drew roars as a sea of pumping fists and devil horns accompanies our maddened choral reply.
You’ll note a lack of a replacement bassist and, whilst low-end monkeys like myself can fling subsonic poop around the room whilst screeching about sonic registers and the like, it makes well enough sense. Technological advancements like the ABY pedal setups these guys use, as well as the beauty of being able to use heavier-gauged 6+-string setups, affords you basically a bass guitar each in the boomier end of the aural spectrum.
The end result of all this reshuffling results in anything but a paper-thin mix. If anything, it’s the complete opposite. Opener and recently-released LP Hideous Aftermath (2025) opener ‘Rotted Entanglement’ is a grotesquely fun and swingy statement of intent. Barreling out of the gates with immediate death metal ferocity, it’s not exactly a plodding bree-and-pinch-harmonics lurker like, say, ‘Menstrual Envy’ from Tortured Whole.
Indeed, those guitars don’t ring out with angelic and crisp dulcet ringing. If anything, they lumber over the sea of whirling bodies already engaged in mutually-assured destruction, stuffing into your cochlea in an overwhelmingly thick but discernible blanket. It works well against the throaty, guttural belching roars and man-who-just-got-shot snarls/rasps courtesy of Devin, and makes that wonderful, piercing twonk of the worlds’ tightest snare ring out like shattering glass. And don’t even get me started on the double-kicks that felt imposing and deep enough to rattle the ribcage. Over all the din, Drew requests “Let me hear you scream!” as a venue-wide caterwaul erupts over the piercing, thudding sonic assault. I don’t think it’s even possible for my resource-sapped neurodivergent brain to even be capable of dissociating through this; all my sensory receptors are lit up across the board like a missile defence system during a nuclear war.
Thanking us for our patronage and selling out not only the show as Melburnites but Australians generally across a tour, there’s another wail of feverish applause as Swank additionally gives a shoutout to local openers Gutless. “Make some noise for Gutless who opened this bitch up!” he roars, before dropping us back into their idiomatically gutter-bound filth once more with ‘Feening for Bloodshed’.
The leashed crawl that bookends the latter half of the first number, a stupendously thick and heavy set of lumbering breakdown riffs filled with double-kicks, is traded in for a sharper, faster overall tempo on the second track. The twitchy, stabbing nature of the riffage on this track is one of many countless displays of Cody and Drew’s musical flexibility. Devin, meanwhile, also adds inflects some of that meaty, half-barked half-spoken word pained roars to his flits between guttural gargle and high-pitched shriek, raising the intensity another notch.
Eric’s posture greatly betrays his precision, relaxed and swinging wide, hard and loose in gait, but striking the hammer with the precision of a clone manufactured for this exact purpose. It’s choppy, stop-start-y and overall a much busier track, but this is a band who excel in propelling both groove and brutality through the same funnel. The raw slamming death metal sewage output only serves to intensify a brutish enough pit into more antics, crowd-surfers peeling over the barrier in waves.
“Make some noise for goddamn PeelingFlesh from Oklahoma!” Swank roars once the clamouring cries of joy settle down, inciting another Mexican-wave of hoots, hollers and cheers. “This song’s about having sex with a dead body, it’s called ‘Felony of Use’” is a sentence you’ll only hear rapturous and excited applause for at gigs like this and… well, I’m not keen on finding out what the real-life equivalent meeting of minds would like there.
Speaking of minds meeting, none other than Hazy from the ‘Flesh strides on-stage for a duet performance. Already the crowd are beyond roasting in terms of warmed-up, so when Demonteal’s low-register-defying boom snarls as both absolute-units stand astride cupping mics with four raised elbows, we collectively lose our shit - thankfully figuratively, although with the sheer impact of the mix, I once again can’t make assumptions there. There’s plenty enough folks munted enough in the pit for that to have been a possibility. “Circle-pit!” D calls, placing it precisely between the track’s shift from death-metal fury into that miserly, doom-inflected, lurching breakdown. “Show us someone’s fucking head!” is a request you couldn’t one hundred percent guarantee won’t be taken literally by at least one testosterone-possessed bruiser in that pit. Thankfully, this gig doesn’t make the news for in-vivo decapitations, but my head sure feels close to being hacked off with a rusty saw. And I for one am loving the feeling. “Goodbye!” Swank smirks at another juncture, the two vocalists both keeping those violence-hotplates constantly on the boil.
Some classically metal windmilling from Swank on D’s departure sees out the track with a distinctly George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fischer flavour, adding to the jagged old-school death metal riffage that trounces heads towards the tracks’ conclusion. This is… this is nuts. Devin’s little oratory that follows on is something I had to make mention of - bro goes from a heartfelt expression of thanks for the tour selling out, his assurance that Australia has fast become their favourite place to play when not States-side… then he gets visibly distracted and smily during a wash of green light (a lot of VERY cool blending of mono and polychromatic lighting tonight, did a great job). “Green light…. I like that green light!” he mentions, grinning.
Gaining his composure again after being bathed in the necrotic colour that suits them so well, he keeps the banter going with the ol’ Captain Obvious: “this song’s about ripping someone’s face off, it’s called ‘Face Ripped Off’!”. Not pictured - musicologists sighing with relief knowing they won’t have to sit here for hours trying to crack the code. Even for Sanguisugabogg, a band I’m sure many tech-death and other purists would cuss out for being too simplistic in riff-approach, this one’s so primitive and bare you’d swear it just teleported in from the Paleolithic era. I need not really wax lyrical too long about the resultant effect on the pit - imagine the above, but amplified by a factor of ten. From my vantage-point on the first stepped tier up, all I can see is whirling limbs, folks picking up or indeed bashing into each other. As the lights wash over the pit-brutes, almost everyone’s got an expression of eager, cheeky hungriness. Often you catch reactionary fear, aggression, fight-or-flight, maybe even a few punch-ons to boot. Those kids look like Willy Wonka threw the keys to the factory at them and said “I’ll be back Monday - have at it, go nuts”.
Cheers, applause and more classic Devy (not THAT Devy, but hey, must be in a name) banter. “This one’s for the short kings out there - this one might not be long, but it hits like a hammer, just like me” he grins, our laughter at the self-deprecating quip drowned out by another relentless wall of gore-soaked slamming death. ‘A Lesson in Savagery’ exemplifies my way, way overused review-saying: it does what it says on the tin.
That tin turns out to be an interdimentional mimic that’s been squatting in the swamp far too long, a jagged, corrosive beast that snaps between churning grooves and satisfyingly heavy moments of blasting speed. The juxtaposition between all the jazzy little fills and these breakneck passages is incredibly satisfying, showcasing our drummers’ skill at weaving moods and tempo together with that whip-crack snare acting as a jagged needle. “Circle pit! Circle pit!” screams Devin frantically, the motion seeming to act as his stand-in for oxygen replenishment given he’s barking the order at least once every couple of minutes.
“We got a day off tomorrow and we’re looking for cabbage”, Swank grins at the end of this track, to applause and mirth both. “Weed. We’re talking weed” to the surprise of absolutely no one, even autists like me who might elsewise be like “why is bro so hungry for vegetables?”. Devin mentions the next track (‘Abhorrent Conception’) was their first single release, and it’s all about “Moms killing babies”. Family-friendly fare and writer sarcasm both ensues as we descend into another cavern of brow-beaten guttural violence, a particularly speedy section of double-kicks as he roars with an even throatier, elongated and more desperate fury garnering a whopping cheer from all of us.
“How you doing, Melbourne?” Swank checks in after another Bogg-beating, to applause. “If you like merch you should go check out what PeelingFlesh have on offer. We’ve got an Australian exclusive shirt with Bluey on it!” he smirks, receiving a patriotic cheer in response. For what it’s worth, the bands’ merch game is ridiculously good - either the goriest of gore-splatted, or chimeric abominations like the Monsters Inc characters on all sorts of drugs that I still pop on from purchasing the previous tour. “We put Bluey on there fighting Paw Patrol because ‘fuck cops’” he grins. “ACAB - this one’s called ‘Mortal Admonishment’!”
Thus continues the trend of relentless breakdowns, blastbeats, swingy/jazzy interludes and death metal aggression, all piped into the ‘Bogg’s live package. I’m slowing down on the verbiage here not because the bands’ set is same-same by now, moreso because time is luxury and there’s so many interesting little dynamic moments in what elitists might write off as low-brow that I’d be here forever.
Suffice to say, no one in the room at that time gave a rat’s about any of that, similar to how little onus I put on such snobbery now. Not when I’m recalling the carnival of slam-death funhouse romp that is every number on tonights’ setlist. It’s all great. It’s all fun. This is how and why the Sandwich Sugar Snog/Spammy Super Blob/etc sell tours out. They have a reputation that precedes them with very good cause.
It’s the one-two punch of ‘Dragged By A Truck’ and ‘Dead as Shit’ that give us long-term followers the natural and climactic conclusion we’ve secretly been clamoring for as the set draws to a mighty, anthemic close. From the pummelling feigned simplicity of the prior track to the a-capella singalong of those ascending pinch harmonics in the latter, the definition of audience participation is stretched and warped, molded into strange and aggressive avenues by an audience simply too bludgeoned and assailed (both sonically and by each other) to hold back now. Standees and pit-pushers alike join in one final cataclysmic flurry of timed motion, a sea of applause erupting and exploding as the set reaches a close.
As mentioned earlier with PeelingFlesh and the ‘Bogg - the sheer sonic size, the hugeness and violent, guttural caveman tribalism stoked by tonight makes me legitimately sad that headliners are people too and have to finish up eventually.
Tonight, Sanguisugabogg, PeelingFlesh and Gutless dragged us into the most base, raw and primitive corners of our mammalian hind-brains, inciting the feral Australian that prowls and lurks within each of us. To any detractors of the band based on the whole association with slam, breakdowns etc? Miss these guys next time at your peril, but that’s probably a good thing. The rest of us will be waiting with bated breath to smash that ticket purchase link once again. You can’t look an experience this good in the eye and then deny it on a subsequent tour.
LINKS:
Gutless:
PeelingFlesh:
(see here for PF Radio 2 LP Orders)
Sanguisugabogg:
(see above for: Social Media links, live footage, Century Media store, merch, etc)
(see here also for Hideous Aftermath LP orders)