Live Review: Chelsea Grin, Boris The Blade, Graves, Bayharbour, Consider Me Heartless

The beers are cold, tattoos are on show and there are piercings stretched to the point you could lob your empty bottles through them. Let's get heavy. Consider Me Heartless open the night to a devout few, though being this early (and relatively sober), the audience sticks to the edges of the room making the whole scene resemble an awkward high school disco.

Flying the flag for Brisbane is local metalcore outfit Bayharbour. Channelling the sounds of Confession and August Burns Red with some melodic guitar hooks and a bountiful buffet of breakdowns, they get some limbs swinging in the pit as the crowd starts to grow.

By turning their tuning pegs down, Graves turn the heavy dial up. The crew from Wollongong kick off the drop-tuned theme of the whole night with Meshuggah-esque tones and a rhythm section sure to snap a few necks.

Boris The Blade quickly make their presence known as the crowd are instructed to "get the fuck away from the bar and up the front!" — to which the packed crowd mostly obliges. These guys are as heavy as Kyle Sandiland's sense of self-worth, the guttural vocals and constant drum-fills producing a sound similar to fellow Aussie deathcore legends Thy Art Is Murder, and a crowd just as deadly.

Utah deathcore giants Chelsea Grin straight away command the stage. These guys are pure brutality, comprising of demonic vocals, a barrage of down-tuned distortion and so much bass that people's view of the brown note being merely a myth is getting challenged. The slippery blood/beer/spit concoction under foot in combination with people who look like they're fighting invisible ninjas is making for a real show of survivalism as bodies slip over, faces get hit and every few seconds somebody is limping out of the mess of limbs (yours truly only managing to sustain impressive bruises, thanks for asking). As the set rolls on, one open-string, double-kick-laden ditty turns into another which then flows into another and if you aren't kept alert by the utter fear of your physical well-being, one could find themselves on the verge of boredom. There isn't exactly anything new or revolutionary in terms of songwriting going on here, which is fine if you just want to take on invisible Jackie Chan; just don't expect to get mesmerised by what you're hearing. Nonetheless, by set's end everybody's drenched and damaged, but satisfied.