Soulfly w/ City Of Fire and Incite

There is always excitement and expectation in the air before any gig involving Max Cavalera, his legendary status in metal. Going on to create original styles does that to you. His main squeeze musically these days, as we all know, is Soulfly, and tonight they plan to lay waste to Sydney on the back of their pummeling late album Omen. It was easy to notice the punters were eager for this spectacle event standing outside next to the Metro Theater, the late change of venue perturbing no one.

Some fresh stock got the nights shindig underway, a little group called Incite, helmed by none-other than Max's own stepson, Ritchie Cavalera, proving that blood isn't necessary to live up to a name. Their brand of up-to-date metal was a good taster for the crowd, even if it seemed un-neededly complicated at some points which had a hard time translating well through the venue.

They had the energy and cajones to step up to the plate before two pedegrees of modern metal would take to the stage, and the punters enjoyed it to no end. This is the start of something beautiful, once Incite refine their sound, they'll be unstoppable.

Pseudo-supergroup City Of Fire followed as second support, their first time on this soil in said combination could have been something to marvel what with the likes of Burton C. Bell and Byron Stroud (Fear Factory and Strapping Young Lad respectively) as well as Jed Simon (Another SYL alumni as touring guitar mangler) combining their forces. Alas, the set never really got on its feet and the blame mostly goes to poor mixing, as Burton, in all his glory, was beaten down by an overbearing guitar soup and killed off the soaring melodies of most of the songs, effectively neutering the whole thing.

This was a disappointment, considering that in inspection, all the members played well and didn't let you down there, it's just a shame.

Unfortunately, also, many people had their expectations of what a band containing previously mentioned members would sound like, and many seemed rather disgusted at the fact that the band sounded nothing like FF nor SYL, next time, do your homework guys, nothing worse than people bitching because they are presumptuous.

City Of Fire managed to get a few people going, and there were a lot of tour shirts seen afterwards, so it wasn't a failure, 'Rising' was definitely a highlight of the whole night.

By the time Soulfly made it to the stage, the crowd were getting restless and anxious for what they came here for, Max!

Suitably riled up by the backing track, Max had the crowd chanting 'Blood, Fire, War, Hate', as the opening for the song of the same name. Wait, that's not from the new album...
Second track: Prophecy, then Primitive. Ah, I see what's going on here, it's a 'best of' of album openers! The confusing move, especially as they should be promoting the new album (As far as tradition states), worked a charm, the familiar mosh tracks set the crowd alight. The crowd went from standing around impatiently to an eruption of headbanging, jumping, shouting and beer, everywhere, and this was just the start of it all, there was at least an hour or so of this to go and there was no sign of anything letting up!

Soulfly managed to keep up this appearance for the time they were on stage, the only time something wasn't going crazy was in the short gaps between songs, even sometimes they were filled with something: Comments, solos, noise, lots and lots of noise.

Unfortunately, a new spectacle dawned on the experienced, Max is getting old, and it is showing. One man can only be crazy energetic for so long before it starts to take its toll. If it hasn't been for the spartan effort of the rest of the band, this would have been a bitter disappointment, but good thing Max knows good company. It seemed a bit sad to see him leave out parts of lyrics and it was debatable whether or not his guitar was actually plugged in! Mind you, the show was good enough for most of us not to notice, but to be there in the glory days must have been something amazing to watch.

Drummer Joe Nunez is powered by something unknowen to man, he just does not stop, even going as far as riling up the crowd on his own after others had departed the stage. The guitarist Marc Rizzo was a spectacle in himself, holding on to his guitar like an apprentice with a malfunctioning jackhammer and knocking all sorts of sounds out of it with technical grace.
The interim bass player, Rasputin (Johny Chow) cranked his stuff out, while everyone simply marveling at his beard.

One other thing got to me, with the talent in residency at the Metro milling about on-stage and off, one wouldn't be critised for thinking that maybe the opportunity for interset guest appearances was obvious, at least having Burton come out for a duet of some kind. But I guess Australia is used to only hearing about those legendary 'You should have been THERE' moments seemingly reserved for northern hemisphere gigs, suppose the bands just arn't up for it amidst jetlag and local cigarette prices...

But there we have it, a gig that could have been stuff of legends but didn't quite make it, if only for the poor sound that plagued the whole night, I mean, who was controlling it, the deaf? Sure I could FEEL everything, but I wanted to hear properly!

Lets hope to see City Of Fire out again sometime with better results, and we will see Incite again for sure.

We also hope Max gets his mojo back!

Yok.