Review
Crabcore Fest VI
The Crabcore Festival is a celebration of bands local to Geneva and its surroundings – the sixth edition of the festival featured eight bands from the local metal and hardcore scene. The two days had something for any fan of heavy music and were filled with a little bit of everything from hardcore and death metal to progressive rock and post metal, and featured both established bands as well as newcomers such as OMA and Ailurophobia, both of which played their first ever show on Friday.
Friday
OMA opened the show on Friday to a quite shy audience, maybe also due to the fact that beside a vague description of the band on the festival website, there wasn’t all that much information about them. But in no time, the crowd got closer to the stage and filled up the concert hall and some, including me, were left wanting more at the end of the concert. Definitely a successful first performance for the band and a surprise discovery from my side. While they haven’t released anything yet and their online presence is still quite sparse, it’s a band to look out for for anyone that enjoys progressive metal with a variety of influences ranging from sludge to oriental melodies.
Next up were Code of Conduct, playing for their home crowd. The “Lancy City Hardcore” band is a local supergroup made-up of members from various (post-) hardcore and grindcore bands from Geneva and its surroundings. Unsurprisingly, it got a bit wilder during their set, with a first (and second) wall of death and the first few crowd surfers.
Ailurophobia, up on stage third, was also playing live for the first time ever. The death metal band, named after the “overwhelming fear of cats”, fittingly dedicated their set to “ending the supremacy of cats”, and that we, as a society, should stop financing cats and rather “listen to metal and drink beer”. While I won’t ever change my cat-loving ways, I can still get behind the second part, and their music is worth a listen in any case – cat lovers and cat haters alike.
Closing the first day was Chaoseum, nu-metal band from Lausanne. Their performance reminded of a cross between Mudwayne (the performance) and Korn (the music). Despite just returning from tour with Tarja and Marko Hietala, the band delivered an energetic performance “at home”.
Saturday
The second day of the festival was opened by Darkflow. The shock rockers from Lausanne played a set mostly consisting of songs off their most recent album, Insane Circus, but also some new material – which will be, as they announced, featured in a new album to be released next march. From a very theatric performance by Darkflow in equally theatric outfits, we moved on to t(h)rash metal group 7tone. Active since 1996, they’ve been through a few genre changes from metal to industrial and ambient and now back to metal with their latest album. Which they played in its near entirety for their set. The audience also got a little glimpse into a new release in the making with “Lazy” – their new song “for lazy people”.
Up next was Endless Garden, “home-grown” band playing progressive metal. For the Crabcore Festival, the quartet featured a new bassist playing with them live for the first time. The band centers their music around themes of animal welfare, ecology, nature and the interactions between humans and the environment. Among the songs played by the band was “In Obscurity”, a single released end of last year about the fate of livestock animal. Sadly some people already left the Festival due to some delays and by the time Impure Wilhelmina came on stage, they had to play to a bit of a smaller crowd. Still, the ones that stayed made up for it with a pretty active mosh pit considering the slower post-metal tunes played by Impure Wilhelmina.
From the music, the staging (great lights!) to the food and drinks, the sixth edition of the Crabcore Fest was a great experience and a fantastic way for all enjoyers of heavy music to discover new local bands as well as to see some more established ones in an intimate setting.
