Live Review: Toxic Holocaust, Bulletbelt, Asylum, Malakyte

Without a new album to promote, and relegated to a week night, there's not a great deal of fanfare surrounding the return of American neo-thrashers Toxic Holocaust. But what's lacking in hype is accounted for in the top-to-bottom radness of the line-up. And of course, if it's a thrash show in Brisbane, Malakyte are going to be on that line-up. It's kind of a death and taxes thing, it's inevitable. But what's funny is remembering that the band, having only recently formed, got one of their first breaks supporting Toxic Holocaust at The Zoo back in 2012, and how a scrappy bunch of fanboys can turn their show into a dynamic moshtravaganza where Reign In Blood speed gels with the South Of Heaven evilness in a relatively short period of time. A couple more years and who knows where these dudes can take it.

Also doing Brisbane thrashards proud are Asylum, who burst onto the stage when Malakyte have finished their thing. With plenty of slick riffs and guitar interplay referencing the classic rhythm/lead teams of the big four, the outfit do the damnedest to incite a pit and get the show popping off.

New Zealand's Bulletbelt have been really starting to make a name for themselves on this side of the ditch ever since they dropped Rise Of The Banshee last year. And when they're on stage tonight it's pretty obvious why. The five-piece bring all the gravitas of a headliner to their main support slot that blends the speed of death metal with the jagged gnarliness of top-rate black metal. Taking direction from the genre fluidity that continues to make Goatwhore's records brilliant, Bulletbelt craft a powerful and engaging extreme metal set where it seems like nothing, musically, is off limits.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the small crowd swells its numbers just as Toxic Holocaust are about to do their thing. It doesn't take long for these newly arrived people to form a pit and for said pit to respond to frontman Joel Grind's snarled requests for activity. But there is little need for any extra verbal persuasion as double kicks blast through Crowbar and Toxic Holocaust burn through their set. With a sound that is as apocalyptic as the band's moniker, Toxic Holocaust quickly get the room banging along to every slick crossover-styled thrash riff. Efforts like Bitch and Wild Dogs capture the band's powerful synthesis of crusty punk and late '80s thrash metal. For tunes so unabashedly rooted in archaic styles, the energy and inventiveness in Toxic Holocaust's set tonight makes it obvious why they're still going strong even after the thrash revival fad came and went.