Archspire @ Lion Arts Factory
Built to Blast.
Review and photos by Caleb Morgan.
When Archspire released their latest album Bleed the Future with a strong drop of the phenomenal track Drone Corpse Aviator, I knew two things needed to happen. First, I needed some water - because GOD DAMN. Second, I desperately needed to watch these goofy Canadians beat the brains out of my ears in a crusty venue ASAP.
Unfortunately, this took two years to come to fruition, but by all blessings, Adelaide’s Lion Arts Factory managed to contain the acts of Ingested, Werewolves and Archspire - minus the crust. It really should be said that this night had it all, from blackened death metal in Werewolves, the brutality inflicted by Ingested down to games of twister in a mosh pit highlighted by Archspire’s Oliver Aleron’s stand-up routine that came as a free bonus to the already attractive ticket price. This tour proved that these bands can provide so much, and simultaneously not enough, as I wasn’t the only one to leave the night thinking I needed to see it all again.
The first on for the night could be no better with Melbourne supergroup in Werewolves backed by Dave Haley of ‘Psycroptic’. Werewolves brought an unrelenting onslaught of misery and pain in only the best of ways with the iconic ambience of black metal gripping the death metal influence tightly. How either guitarist survives the endurance requirement of the tremolo action has me surprised as anything, let alone the cracked riffs pulled from the latest album All My Enemies Look and Sound Like Me. This album has been on repeat for me all week (at least after the week it took me to decipher the insanity of the artwork! Seriously, check it out - it’s wild) and to hear the relentless track Under the Ground bouncing off the blackened walls of Lion Arts was a true experience. The fiery backdrop under the flood of gutturals and grinding bass matched the ambience beyond well, and if this tour was anything to go by - Werewolves will be in our faces for a long time.
Hailing from the UK, legendary Death Metal / Slam act Ingested rolled out with absolute class as backline bully Lyn Jeffs double-kicked my teeth in. Seriously, the team around sound needs one hell of a raise, as the opening track Impending Dominance did as intended.
When I said the set was brutal - this isn’t a retrospective thought but a relationship with the sheer feeling the band produced through a chaotic wall of lows. Before the set, I spent some time wandering around the venue pretending to be helpful and as I did, I felt like I was in an NBA locker room as I noticed vocalist Jason Evans spending a respectable amount of time warming up with various stretches.
When they played, it became clear why as Evans energetically paced around the stage, leaving me absolutely buggered trying to match. No matter where you looked, there was always something going on. This showed in the motion of the crowd, who turned into a sea of neck-breaking headbangers throwing horns in every which way. The set was already keeping at a ridiculous pace, but even so, it all kicked up to a new level when Evans called out what had to be the standout for the night - a throwback to a track crowning the slam genre in Skinned & Fucked. The reaction was as idyllic as any band could hope for at that moment as somehow the crowd collectively yelled a knee-jerked “YEAH” my $2 foam earplugs couldn’t come close to resisting. There was absolutely no question as to why Ingested was a key part of this tour. Now we just need to await their headlining return.
Archspire really are just a different breed. When I met guitarist Tobi Morelli before the show, I spilled a cliche fanboy ramble by whining about how much trouble I was having trying to play his parts on the iconic track Involuntary Doppelgänger just to lock eyes and have him relaxingly state “It’s really not that bad”.
This was the moment I knew that this set was going to meet the height of my expectations. Watching Archspire slowly walk out to a dead calm audience was phenomenal. The house lights weren’t on, yet the band was lit up by a sea of wide open eyes marking a level of preparedness I haven’t seen for a long time. The whole night was already at a high, but when the flurried intro of Bleed the Future fleshed out the venue, that preparedness met with action as the crowd shifted from 0-100 in a snap. With speed, proficiency and an enviable sense of fashion made obvious by their brightly coloured boardshorts, Archspire proved world-class death metal isn’t all cargo shorts and sadness.
In between Aleron’s irreplicable trademark ‘shotgun’ vocals and the thousand blasts per millisecond the backline provides, was a steady stream of suspicious jokes that introduced a lighthearted band that’s difficult to find elsewhere in this genre. Seriously - where else could you play a game of Twister in a pit with 500 other people before being crushed in a wall of death? The band really did introduce everything - even coaxing up members of the crowd to participate in a shoey contest with the promise of free merch. Expectedly in the nature of their humour, the shoey king did not receive said free merch - however received in lieu a t-shirt with an image drawn by Morelli of Steve Irwin that we can only say was toeing the line of a comedic Australian hate crime.
The curtain call to end the night came with another trick from Aleron, playfully calling a; “just kidding, THIS is the last song” riff on the crowd before flying into Drone Corpse Aviator, damaging the ego of every other guitarist in the crowd while simultaneously turning us all into affluent vocalists as the crowd couldn’t resist chanting the charismatic chorus.
This set was one of my favourites of 2023 - and I hope to see you at Archspire’s next Australian show.
