Live Review: Hymns To The Dead

Dark Mofo served as willing consort to the Hymns To The Dead — a carefully curated multi-national celebration of metal music and grimoire performance. Hundreds of metal heads filled the large Hobart auditorium of a former modern megachurch, now known as The Odeon.

Inverloch, the Australian band formed from members of the much loved diSEMBOWELMENT opened the bill, the death metal band moving laterally through slow doom metal (like blues riffs played at 1/8 speed) into the quick aggressive powerful drumming and high screaming hallmarks of death metal. Between songs there was no pause, the incredible light rig would drop the stage to black, but under it, the atmospheric drone of loud amps and distorted guitar were allowed to hum, building a tension heavy and strangely tonal set.

While Dark Mofo is not a metal music festival, it does often add world class metal acts to its multi-genre line-up, but Hymns To The Dead is the first headline evening of only metal, and the organisers clearly spared no expense in allowing a large tiered venue with ample smoke and lighting to give the performers the ability to put on a powerful, high calibre, audiovisual experience. Unlike other bills, the stage changeovers are lengthy as the previous band's heraldry are removed and replaced with the banners of the next, saying nothing of the pedalboards and expansive back line.

Hailing from Greece, Dead Congregation are the most traditional in form on the line-up — they blast the crowd with straight up death metal, dripping with raw aggression and brutal pounding strobes and red spots. This is the music that could send an army against Mad Max. The musicianship is tight, perhaps one of the most obvious things about this band. While they sometimes create ambient passages they are not innovators, rather perfectionists. Pounding his arms into the air singer Anastasis Valtsanis raises his fists and brings hundreds of raised arms and shouts from the moshing crowd. 

After another lengthy break, Tribulation takes the stage. This is the band many flew interstate to see and at face value it seems like a strange decision. The Swedish band are glam prog-rock masquerading as black metal, but by whatever deity you praise they are all manner of entertaining. Emaciated long-haired guitarists run and slide across the stage in cobweb-like shawls, pearling out blistering, almost psychedelic solos mid-skid and run across the stage as if testing for weak points in a cage. While initially off-putting, their performance is enigmatic and intoxicating as they ponder through lengthy Swedish metal iterations, drawing the best reaction from the explosive performance of When The Sky Is Black With Devils.

After these acolytes and disciples of the Hymns To The Dead have finished it is clearly time for the masters of cult worship to take the stage. Four altars are placed at the front of the stage each filled with at least two dozen candles and sticks of incense, the real and stage smoke thick enough to force more than a few people further from the stage.

Across the drum rise tablets are laid, as if for a summoning recital, graced by a line of tea candles tracing their length. Three heavy cloaked figures emerge from the smoke, unmoving. One figure moves to the front where a mic is positioned between two crossed scythes. Raising its arms the figure yells with the bestial call of the damned as wailing guitar and demented church organ rises through the smoke. The kind of band that only comes out at night. Prague's own Cult Of Fire are not all droning atmosphere, and while the songs are long in duration they do pack heavy chugging riffs favouring the brute impact of simplicity.

Four songs in, one of the bowls at the altar catches fire and tech race to blow it out — the music didn't stop and the crowds' reaction to this was savage. Disappointingly, the spectacle of the show proves too much for some people who barely take a moment away from their smart phones to watch the stage during the performance, the constant screen backlights popping up from the crowd a constant dampener of the theatric atmosphere the band intended.

When the song ended you could only hear the crackling of flames in the packed hall and then, as if turning on a CD, all members of the band punched in with violent strength.

Cult Of Fire are the dark chantry and benefit heavily from an expensive light and stage show, the artists barely moving except at times when the singer raises his arms outstretched to the audience like a preacher. The show ends without discussion when the band turns and slowly walks from the stage, their ritual complete, as the crowd finds themselves stumbling out of the smoke and into a clear and freezing, dark pagan night in Hobart.