Cannibal Corpse rolled into South Burlington, Vermont Sunday night on their Red Before Black Tour. Their show at Higher Ground was a Fall highlight for North Country Metalheads looking for a night of extreme music.

The opening band was Perdition Temple, a three-piece Death Metal act featuring Gene Palubicki on guitar and vocals with Ronnie Parmer on drums and Alex Blume working the bass. Fast and aggressive, the riff-heavy, driving guitar broke the ice and set the tone for evening. Palubicki’s coarse voice and precision fretting filled the room with energy and threat. Wrapping up a tight 30 minutes in a blistering frenzy, Perdition Temple surely made the list for a lot of new fans in the audience.

The middle act was Thy Art Is Murder, an Australian band whose music is usually placed in the deathcore category. I heard many fans in the crowd saying they’d come specifically to see Thy Art Is Murder and that didn’t surprise me at all – they have a big following and they don’t tour the US all the time. The band puts up a powerful wall of sound with two guitars via Andy Marsh and Sean Delander that surround frontman CJ McMahon. The bass backing by Kevin Butler and clinical drumming by Jesse Beahler complete the scene.

CJ McMahon was suffering from a respiratory infection which caused him obvious discomfort but his performance didn’t seem to suffer at all. Leaning into material from their new album Human Target (Nuclear Blast), Thy Art Is Murder shook the room and played to their strengths, not neglecting fan favorites. In fact, the only time the crowd was actually singing punchlines was during the Thy Art Is Murder set. McMahon talked the crowd into greater participation by reflecting on how wild the show in Montreal the night before had been. Burlington, he told us, was great, but Montreal was unmatchable. The circle pits were going in force, presaging the vortex they would become with the headliner. There were no disappointments with their solid heavy work.

The main event was Cannibal Corpse, rounding out the tail end of their Red Before Black (Metal Blade) tour. Standing in the pit in the dark after the band had taken the stage but before they began playing, I could see vocalist George Fisher, Corpsegrinder. He stood with his back to the crowd taking deep, fierce breaths, filling his lungs to ready himself for the auditory assault he and the band were about to perpetrate. Hit the lights, hit the sound, and the crowd erupted to “Code of the Slashers.” Moshing started almost immediately and within a few minutes, an enormous circle pit had formed in the Higher Ground Ballroom with a pulsing jagged edge. Metal was happening.

The band lead with three songs from the latest album then took a tour through their long catalogue of music. Rob Barrett and Erik Rutan brought the riffs and shreds with veteran accuracy while founding members Alex Webster and Paul Mazurkiewicz steadied the songs with an unbreachable foundation. Fisher did not disappoint with his signature hair whipping head snaps, his face completely covered by the result when he sang. This is a band that never makes any excuses and always delivers the fury.

Never slowing down, Cannibal Corpse announced in October that they would begin working on a new album, their 15^th full-length release, as soon as the current tour wraps up. See the show while you can. Cannibal Corpse, Thy Art Is Murder, and Perdition Temple is a great lineup. They are three bands that complement each other by employing similar musical themes while maintaining unique identities and performance styles.

© Wayne Edwards.