The “Impericon Never Say Die Tour“ stopped in Prague on 13rd November, 2016 at Futurum. The tour contains the international bands Whitechapel, Thy Art Is Murder, Carnifex, Obey the Brave, Fallujah, Make Them Suffer and Polar. The first band of the evening was the band Polar. The English guys played many songs off their newer albums, which were presented by a nice performance of the band. But they got the curse of the opener band: The mix was unfortunately awful. The vocals were too loud and the drums too. That killed the atmosphere in the fine venue. Nevertheless, walls of death and circle pits appeared, so, I think that the guys on stage compensated for the sound with their great performance and everything was fine. It was quite impressive for an opener band!
The next band was Make Them Suffer, from Australia. They began with some really powerful songs, a mix of older and newer tracks, and the audience endorsed this with circle pits, again. I stood in the middle of the venue and I was quite impressed by the people in front of and on stage. The sound was better than before. I could hear every single instrument, like background vocals or keyboard patterns, but the voice was too loud again. But I felt the motivation of the people around in the whole venue. They nodded and got in the pit. In summary, the show of Make Them Suffer was a great success for heating up the people’s mood!
After these opening bands, Fallujah came up on stage. The Americans rocked the venue from the beginning. The sound was clear and powerful and it was fun to see them on stage. Yes, it was a hardcore/deathcore event, so I think they adjusted their setlist in respect to this that evening. What a pity for Progressive Death Metal fans, but this was a good idea to fit into the lineup. I had the feeling Fallujah was at the wrong event that evening. The people in the venue were curious at the beginning, but not very consistently motivated to celebrate the band during the whole performance. Too bad for the band, because they rocked the stage very well and at least I was very happy to see them live at the venue this night.
Obey The Brave from Canada came up next. As expected, they did a powerful and groovy performance. The amount of people in front of the stage rose, and they began moshing and forming circle pits, and I had the feeling that the people were full of power to celebrate the band on stage. The sound was awesomely mixed, but the voice here was maybe too quiet for the whole package of awesome hardcore music. But the audience celebrated this performance massively and this is the important thing about it! The performance of the American Carnifex was really awesome –the frontman Scott Lewis did an awesome show and motivated the people in front of him to get crazy and they did. The rest of the band was a bit boring, because they only played their stuff and did nothing else more. But this didn’t influence the audience, so we all had a really great time seeing them live on stage!
Thy Art Is Murder began to play after a short rebuild of the stage. My thought about the performance of the Australians is that it was my personal highlight at that evening. Awesome setlist with really nice tracks, great mix of the sound in every aspect and an impressive performance by the whole band. I admit, I hadn’t expected such an impressive show by them, but I’m happy that I could see them live on stage with these great conditions! The last artist of the evening was the headliner band from America, Whitechapel. They had a setlist filled with the whole spectrum of their discography, from the first album ‘The Somatic Defilement’ to their newest one ‘Mark of the Blade’. Tracks like “Possession”, “This is Exile” and “Elitist Ones” made the people crazy in front of the stage.
Maybe the audience wasn’t as dynamic as while the other bands played, but this could be because of the length of the evening (about 5 hours). But frontman Phil Bozeman know how to motivate the fans and it was an awesome performance of the guy on stage. The sound was fine and all of the instruments could be perceived most of the time, which built up some atmosphere towards the end of that evening. Nevertheless, Whitechapel did their job well and played “The Saw is the Law” as an encore for the people in the venue. Great music and powerful performance completed the event and I was happy to see Whitechapel live on stage finally! It was an awesome evening full of great bands. Polar, Make Them Suffer, Fallujah, Obey The Brave, Carnifex, They Art Is Murder and Whitechapel was an powerful mixture of international Deathcore and Death Metal Bands. Although Fallujah seemed to be on a wrong event, the whole evening was really impressive and full of fun for all people in the venue. If I’ll be able to see this package of bands again, I’ll do it without any doubts!