Cattle Decapitation
9th September 2023
Whammy! Bar, Auckland, New Zealand.
Review and photography by Mark Derricutt.
Firstly, I want to start by offering up great thanks to those who helped me escape last night’s crazy, insane Cattle Decapitation pit. It’s often said: “If you go down, you WILL be picked up” and whilst that’s true, sometimes, that’s no easy feat to accomplish – especially when it was not so much an “up” I needed.
It feels like a lifetime ago that Cattle Decapitation last hit our shores at the start of 2020; since then we’ve seen the world suffer disease, floods, war, and famine – and finally, as things shift into a sense of normality we’re reminded that complacency is never a good thing, as my body can attest to in the hours following kiwi heavyweights Plague of The Fallen, and Organectomy’s sets, followed by the Californian onslaught.
This would be my first time catching Plague Of The Fallen live, and if I thought Stuart Henley-Minchington was a beast from seeing Blindfolded And Led To The Woods (guitars) watching him up close on the drums flawed me with the precision and power on display – certainly a force to represent Kiwi metal on the world stage.
Combined with frontman Vin Minchinton (bass/vocals) and Organectomy cohorts Sam and Mathew on guitars, Plague was a perfect opening act – discordant and precisely unrelenting, yet, still easing our way into the evening events.
After an all too brief set from Plague of the Fallen, Organectomy hit the stage to bring beautiful guttural chaos slamming into our cores. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen the band live, and they’ve certainly stepped things up a notch: rhythmically simpler, and at times slower than Plague. But with slamming tunes, comes slamming fans, and I escaped the pit after the fourth or fifth unintentional head punch from flailing limbs.
As Cattle Decapitation prepared to grace the stage, I was mentally preparing myself – get some photos, and get the heck out of the pit!
At least that was the intention.
With the entire tour being sold out – I was well aware of the pitfalls of a packed-out Whammy! Bar, something about tonight seemed different – the venue wasn’t so full you couldn’t move, but the crowd seemed extra agitated. Even before the band hit the stage, several punters were clawing at the front row, as if to climb on stage themselves – which practically happened anyway.
Even before the unmistakable vocals of Travis Ryan – scathingly raspy and yet melodic, uttered a single growl or scream, the crowd surged forward. Bracing myself with one hand pushing down against a fold back with camera in hand attempting as much as possible to even get a single frame off.
A moment later, I saw a body lurch forward to my left, crashing into the fold back, sliding it forward and more bodies slam their way into me.
This was my cue to escape until I felt the whiplash of Travis’s sweat-ridden hair against my neck. Moments later – Travis is seemingly using my head/shoulders as leverage for his own balance. This isn’t an unexpected exchange in the throes of a pit, but combined with everything else left me face-planted and splayed out over the stage between a pair of fold-backs.
With arms outstretched, holding a camera, legs dangling over the stage twisted and entwined between bodies with no grounding, I felt helpless and trapped, a voice unheard among the cacophony. As the current song ended, a small measure of respite meant some well-meaning pit people were able to create a small barricade, and cradling my camera enough I could reconnect myself to solid ground and escape.
None-the-wiser, Cattle Decapitation launched into the next song and the show went on.
After checking myself, and my gear – and letting my panic subside, it’s back to the side-of-stage to catch the rest of the set and grab some more images.
From the sidelines, I watched Ben (Valhalla Touring) perched where I once lay, protecting both foldbacks and pedal boards, as the relentless onslaught of both band and audience battled head to head.
Catching up with guitarist Josh Elmore during pack down, we briefly discussed the earlier chaos, venue/audience safety, and the speed at which such things appear, and disappear in a blur. I left that night bruised, but unbroken, and satiated to the brim with a concert experience one will truly never forget.
Cattle Decapitation:
Organectomy:
Plague of the Fallen:
Were you there at Whammy! Bar for this crushing metal gig? Or have you seen Cattle Decapitation perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Note: Ambient Light was provided passes to review and photograph this concert. As always, this has not influenced the review in any way and the opinions expressed are those of Ambient Light’s only.
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That was a fucking sick ass show but I gotta ask, are you alright after all that? The pit was a lot more aggro than my last show and my partner and I were talking about that the night after. But holy fuck that was killer!