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It was the Night of the Living Shred in Metairie!

It was a dark and spooky night at the High Ground in Metairie. All the kids had come out in abundance and pack the small club to the rafters. All of a sudden, guitars started wailing, drums were pounding, the walls rattled with bass and a man screamed loud enough to pop ear drums. It was Night of the Living Shred!

Caliban and Suffokate were the first shredders on the stage. German crushers Caliban played such incredibly heavy music, it should almost be labeled as pure death metal. Guitarists Marc Goertz and Denis Schmidt didn’t play guitar; they pulled the riffs out of their bodies using guitars. Many songs came from their new album “Say Hello to Tragedy,” which is incredible live, so I can’t wait to hear it in my car stereo. Suffokate walked on stage and started creating music so powerful that the crowd couldn’t decide whether to stand and watch the spectacle or go crazy to impress the band and make them play harder (if it was even possible). Kids climbed on the low hanging rafters to headbang upside-down. Lead vocalist, with HUGE gages in his ears, grimaced and groaned his words of wisdom. The bass played by Bray Almini sank through the floor and made an extremely loud atmosphere that the band used as a foundation to create their madness.

After the Burial shook the walls with their extremely low-tuned and loud bass so hard, it seemed like the concrete walls were about to chipping. The evenly-paced riffing and drumming from the songs off of their newly re-released album “Rareform” were perfect to headbang to. The riffs were chugging along while the breakdowns soared over head. Drummer Dan Carle kept perfect timing that kept the whole band on perfect time. All Shall Perish came on quickly after After the Burial had finished and acted out their name by killing the audience with sheer brutality. The down-tuned instruments rattled the speakers and rung ears. The growling by vocalist Eddie Hermida was superb. He creates quite a range of growls when most just stay in one spot. I thought his vocal cords were tearing! Guitarists Jason Richardson and Ben Orum did an amazing job racing their fingers up and down the necks of their guitars to play so fast.

The headliners of the night entered the stage…and the crowd went wild. Born of Osiris came and immediately started crushing the already beaten crowd with their low-tuned guitar and bass and achingly slow drums. But there was glimmers of hope made by the keyboardist Joe Buras, but were crushed when he would growl along with lead vocalist Ronnie Canizaro. The guitars played by Tosin Abasi and Lee McKinney frenzied those in attendance and opened quite a moshpit. They played songs off of their new album “A Higher Place,” which the audience was very familiar with, and they played songs from their first album to establish their past. Every song was played perfectly. Watching Ronnie lean into the crowd and scream in their faces was kind of scary. That’s the image I left with…on the Night of the Living Shred.