Saturday night, the newly named “The Baso”, in Canberra hosted the album launch for The Serpent Tide, the latest offering from Canberra’s favourite Doom Metaller’s – Witchskull. As is normal at any Witchskull gig, the stage is adorned by four massive Orange cabs, which may I say, put out a hell of a noise. But like all Witchskull gigs, there is often an eclectic range of bands that support these guys. Kicking off tonight was no exception was the hardcore stylings of Loose Cannon. The Cannons hit the stage around 8.00 and produced a half hour of intensely brutal setlist which warmed the crowd there already nicely. Undermines were next up and were a very different sound again to the rest of the bands, playing a hard rock edged set that saw quite a few heads nodding in the crowd along with the blues infused rock. The penultimate band before Witchskull was melodic death metallers, Immorium. Dave (vocals), Chris (drums), Dan & Jared (guitars) along with new bassist Adam literally melted the faces of the crowd with a s 6 song set that went down a treat, covering both some older works and their new song Chains. The set went down a treat and by this time the crowd was baying when Witchskull hit the stage. Witchskull then took every last drop of energy the crowd had and whip them into an exhaustive frenzy. Playing for over an hour from their four albums, the set was clean and loud. For a three piece, these guys have a massive sound. As the strains of the final song faded away, a very happy Canberra crowd was able to head home with some very sore necks…
Photos by Hold Still Photography | Review by Paul Kerr
