Welcome to The Saw’s Butcher Shop! Ya girl was at The Blind Tiger in Greensboro, NC on Friday, May 27, 2022 to see some O.G.s of the Death Metal community. Hypocrisy were in town for a stop on their Worship Tour. And they brought along Carach Angren, The Agonist, and Hideous Divinity. What a show! Everyone was on their A-Game and it was a great night!

I’ve written about The Blind Tiger many times. The club is a major player in all forms of music, and is always a stop for national acts in the Extreme Metal genre. The staff was great, as usual. They had a few tables and chairs set up, but was mostly standing room only for this show.

Hideous Divinity, from Italy, opened the show, and they came out on blast! The crowd was into it from the start and stayed that way (literally) all night. They are a really good band and have an exciting live show. The vocalist is a very good front-man and stayed engaged with the crowd the whole set. He even put the entire microphone in his mouth and growled! It was badass!! The bass player, guitarist, and drummer are VERY talented. Technicality is the form of beating, here. We talked to several of the members, after the show, and they’re great guys. I even got a picture with their vocalist!

The Canadian band, The Agonist, put on a great show! Vicky (vocals) is very talented, classically trained, with the ability to hit many ranges and octaves – from an operatic scale, to deep register gutterals. Everyone in the band – a five-piece with Vicky – were very engaged and banging. The style of music was quite a change, more straightforward Heavy Metal/ metalcore, but the whole night was a lesson in the breadth of the Metal genre! I talked with Vicky after the show. She’s really cool and very thankful to be able to play live again! When she talks, she literally sounds like a Disney princess — no joke. She is very sweet. I got a picture with her and she even did a radio and station ID for The Saw’s Butcher Shop and Overkill radio!

Carach Angren was up next, and they did not disappoint! Coming to us from The Netherlands, they are a Symphonic Black Metal outfit that haunted the show that night. Their name means “Iron Jaws,” which is an excellent metaphor for their vocalist! A great stage presence, and very engaging, this band continued to stir the crowd into a frenzy. It turns out, having a Black Metal band on the bill was a great ice-breaker for some of Hypocrisy’s older songs.

The Swedish Melodic Death Metal titans, Hypocrisy, came out and beat us to a pulp! The experience of Hypocrisy’s live show is 17 songs, spanning their entire 30+ year career, played (almost) non-stop in successive order until the crowd is hamburger. Hypocrisy has four live members, slightly choreographed, with an excellent light show (like an alien abduction), smoke machines, and deafening riffs for your ear holes. The secret, I think, to a Hypocrisy show is the band’s stage presence. Peter (vocals, guitar) has had decades of practice, and this show was an overwhelming practice of stage presence. For their entire show, because of all the smoke, it was an ominous presence of Hypocrisy; mostly silhouettes of larger-than-life legends. I’m glad I got to see Hypocrisy! The whole night was a great show of Metal prowess.

A couple observations

Each genre of Metal, obviously, have different kinds of fans. This show was a Death Metal fan base, which varies in age (from teens to several folks in their 60s, at least). The pit was the younger generation, while the older fans are satisfied to stand and head bang. And there were a lot of both forms.

And the line-up for this show was genius to me. The question for any show is, “Who can follow that?” If you’re not careful with the band order, you have an impossible task for successive bands. I’ve seen this happen MANY times, and to headlining acts trying to “top” a performance of a band that was on before them. This show had bands, at the top of their game, from different genres. It removed, completely, the question begged. This show was a great line-up with excellent performances from all! And Hypocrisy simply finished the job! Awesome!

Stay Metal,

THE SAW