[Concert review] INCANTATION / FUNERUS / RITUAL NECROMANCY / SEMPITERNAL DUSK @ Rotture, Portland, OR, January 10 2015

Talk about starting the new year off right. So far the best (and to be fair only) show I've been to in 2015, everything about this night was perfect. Starting the night off, we met up with our Seattle bros Matt and Matt at The Know, watched the Seahawks dominate over a few ciders before we started out to the show. For some weird reason I thought this show was going to sell out, so I bought tickets well in advance as an Xmas gift for my fiancee, but the venue was nowhere near filled to capacity. The website I bought the tickets from said doors at 8, show at 9. That website was a bit off, turns out doors were at 9. Even so, there was a small line of people near the door lining up when we got there, and Rotture was pretty serious about the whole doors at 9 thing since a few people in line were reprimanded for trying to get to the bar early.

The show started off with Sempiternal Dusk. With their debut LP having dropped recently on Dark Descent and new guitarist Vince (from Anhedonist/Shadow Of The Torturer/Vassafor), Sempiternal Dusk was out for blood. Musically they were perfect death doom, with some touches of black metal thrown in to keep things interesting. The few times I have seen them in the past they were really good, this time around they knocked it out of the fucking park. Having had the LP, I did miss some of the atmospherics the recording offered, but without them Sempiternal Dusk sounded stripped down to the raw primal essence of their sound, and it sounded fucking great. I picked up Destroyer 666's Unchain The Wolves, Diocletian's
and Mournful Congregation's Concrescence Of The Sophia LPs at Tim's Parasitic Records distro.

More beers outside on the patio with friends I don't get to see nearly enough. As part of my fiancee's Xmas gift, I told her she could buy whatever merch she wanted at the show, so a trip by Incantation's merch table leads to a trip to the car. Ritual Necromancy, also with a new member (J Roth from Begrime Exemious), also fucking awesome. Another great local band, who I have seen multiple times, who are always good. Their set had some old ones and some new stuff from the Void Manifest EP (also on Dark Descent, get on it before it sells out). The new stuff is a touch hookier than then old stuff, but equally intense. If you like death metal, you really cannot go wrong with Ritual Necromancy. After their set, I reflected briefly on the fact that the Portland death metal scene is pretty fucking awesome and that I am seriously so stoked on living somewhere that a local metal show always has at least one awesome band that I am stoked on.



Funerus was up next. For anyone who doesn't know, Funerus is Jill McEntee, her husband John McEntee, and a session drummer from the Netherlands playing simple but extremely catchy death metal (what else?) in the vein of Autopsy, and Asphyx. Unfortunately, the goddamn motherfucking ATM machine at Rotture went down at some point prior to this, so me and one of the aforementioned Matts ran out to Plaid Pantry to hit up an ATM that wasn't broken and grabbed cash for merch. What I caught of their set was killer, although it seemed like a lot of the crowd was using their set as a breather between Ritual Necromancy and Incantation. Later on, I found out that both Incantation and Parasitic Records took cards and felt like a fucking idiot for missing quite a bit of Funerus' set to run to a functioning ATM, but I did buy the Reduced To Sludge CD, which Jill McEntee was gracious enough to sign during Incantation's set.

More beers and a few shots with good friends. The night was alive.
And then came Incantation. I don't really know how to review their set as this is a band that I have revered since I discovered them as a teenager, but here goes. Their set was fucking perfect. They played a bunch of songs, classic stuff from Onwards To Golgotha up stuff from Dirges Of Elysium and an unreleased song. Death metal armageddon. This is one of those weird instances where I have trouble properly describing a band live, only because seeing Incantation live was something I honestly thought I never happened, and they fully lived up to my extremely high expectations. I bought the shirt with the skeleton nuns on the front. You'll know it if you see it I guess. Bottom line is Incantation was fucking awesome. If you really like death metal, you will see them if they grace your community with their presence.

Thanks to youtube user vomitheart666 for these clips.

- Tony Howard

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