I know that a 5:30 PM all-ages show on a dreary, rainy Chicago Wednesday doesn’t seem too appealing, but if you happen to be in the mood to check out some dynamite punk/metal/hardcore/whatever before dinner, I urge you to stop by the House of Blues Napalm Death show early to check out the opening bands.
Trap Them go on first, and judging by the group’s 2008 triumph Seizures in Barren Praise (on Deathwish Inc., the label run by Converge singer Jacob Bannon), the five-band bill may very well blow its load with the first set. Blending the ferocity of Tragedy with the punk attitude of Black Flag will never be a bad idea, and Trap Them carries on the tradition of both with devastating metal riffage, blistering drumming, and absolutely balls-out vocals.
Even Napalm Death singer Barney Greenway is impressed, and had this to say in an interview with the blog Metal Sucks: “Trap Them, I heard them for the first time not so long ago, they put me on my ass when I saw them last year at the [Los Angeles] Murder Fest. And to a point, I hate sounding pretentious or melodramatic, but they kind of restored my faith in the metal side of things. They just blew me away.”
Louisville-based trio Coliseum have the unenviable task of following Trap Them. Singer and guitarist Ryan Patterson (brother to Evan Patterson of Young Widows) never gets too fancy with his fist-pumping, in-your-face tunes, which strike a nice balance between angsty and anthemic: Coliseum sticks to the straightforward brutality of hardcore both musically and in mind-set.
After playing the DIY game for years, touring incessantly and living out of the back of a van for pushing ten months at a time, Coliseum signed to Relapse in 2007, released the excellent No Salvation, and now seem to finally be getting their due. It’s ridiculous (and kind of awesome) how many Coliseum T-shirts I’ve seen on bands and fans these past two years.
Toxic Holocaust and Kataklysm round out the bill, with Napalm Death of course headlining.