Emmure – Gig Review & Photo Gallery 19th February @ Max Watts, Melb VIC

Posted on February 19, 2024 by roddy666

Emmure
Max Watts, Melbourne/Naarm VIC
February 19^th, 2024
Supports: ten56, Diamond Construct, Pincer+

Sunday night in Melbourne, the world’s biggest pop star is in town, there are Swifties everywhere. A crowd literally one per cent the size of what Tay-Tay has drawn across town shows up to experience some heaviness.

I know where I’d rather be. Max Watts is a small club venue in the heart of the city, but tonight it is pumping with palpable energy on a mild summer night in M-Town.

And that begins with the opening band at 7:30pm. A very solid crowd is already in attendance for Perth’s Pincer+. This band smashes out a very raw, pounding brand of thrash and punk-influenced metalcore with a drum-heavy mix. What singer Jacson Robb lacks in vocal nuance, he more than makes up for with the abrasive aggression with which he delivers his lyrics and vocal lines, and he and the other band members provide plenty of onstage movement, making for a highly entertaining set.

Being a ‘school night’, and with four bands to accommodate tonight, the two early bands only receive a 20 to 25-minute set each. Pincer+ grasp the opportunity with both hands, pouring as much energy and aggression as they possibly can into the brief allotment.

LISTEN NOW

Diamond Construct are a band on the rise, and their blistering set tonight is an albeit brief showcase as to why – they’re doing something a little different. Fitting very loosely into the ‘metalcore’ category, they inject a whole bunch of other, seemingly disparate influences into the mix. They’re like a prototype cyber/urban nu-metalcore explosion with completely over-the-top drumming and relentlessly harsh vocals. In short, they’re the type of new band that scares the living shit out of tiny-minded metal purists, and they wear their new-era vibe very openly on their collective sleeve.

In a live setting, that mix and its delivery are quite devastating, the band punching together like a heavy jackhammer while frontman Kynan Groundwater prowls the stage and howls his lungs up like a young man possessed. Like Pincer+, the short set ensures Diamond Construct maintains maximum energy and gives it absolutely everything for 25 minutes, with nothing left out there.

The stage is now set for the international part of this evening’s entertainment. ten56 are a relatively new band hailing from Paris, although their singer is English (former Betraying the Martyrs frontman Aaron Matts), and features former members of such luminaries of the bountiful French heavy music scene as Novelists, Kadinja and Uneven Structure. It seems they have poured all that experience into the new project and come up with something rather special. The sound is extremely fired-up metalcore with a nuclear-strength bounce and chest-crushing bass rumble, laced with subtle touches of electro and strong urban influences (mid-late set, the entire band bar Matts leave the stage to allow him to belt out a solo rap.)

Their set this night is pure energy, pouring off the stage like a tsunami, the band tight as a clenched fist in a steel glove as they throw themselves with absolute commitment into the delivery of their set. Between songs, Matts connects with us beautifully, calling us ‘sick cunts’ (which is, of course, one of the highest compliments you can pay an Aussie) and even skulling a shoey at the urging of one of the more vocal patrons in the audience (again, any Aussie worth his or her salt knows exactly what a ‘shoey’ is, but for the uninitiated, it is when you swallow a big mouthful of beer or other alcoholic beverage out of a shoe.) It is an extremely satisfying 40-minute sub-headline set, and the packed-to-the-rafters crowd is now more than ready for the main event.

Another band that seems to terrify metal elitists is Emmure. But the band themselves seem utterly oblivious to this as the long-running, heavily road-hardened act go about their business. And that business is creating riveting modern metal music and putting on an absolutely slammin’ live show.

And slam tonight they do. You can tell this band has been around a long time and has played hundreds and hundreds of live shows – the band is tighter than the tightest thing you can imagine, and that water-tightness only adds further heft to their extraordinarily heavy live sound. And in Frankie Palmeri, they have a vocalist with one of the most gloriously abrasive voices and a frontman with one of the most dynamic and hyperactive presences in heavy music.

On top of this, they appear to be having a hell of a time onstage. Especially guitarist Joshua Travis, whose broad smile barely leaves his face for the entire set as he brings the chunk and the dissonance on his nine-string. Of course, if the band appear to be having fun onstage, we in the crowd are far more likely to have a great time too.

And tonight, we absolutely do.

Although their set tonight is relatively brief on a headliner scale (50 minutes, no encore), it doesn’t seem to matter – the energy expended by the band during that scintillating 50 minutes wows the crowd and they respond in kind, and everyone leaves the venue fully satisfied with what they have experienced this night.

Pay no mind to the haters, Emmure are sick as. Get to CVLTFEST this weekend in Brisbane.

Review by Rod Whitfield

Setlist

You Asked for It
Shinjuku Masterlord
Smokey
Gypsy Disco
Pigs Ear
Natural Born Killer
Flag of the Beast
Sunday Bacon
I Thought You Met Telly and Turned Me Into Casper
Torch
Nemesis
Trash Folder
Children of Cybertron
R2Deepthroat
Solar Flare Homicide
When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong

Photo Gallery by Clinton Hatfield. Insta: @ampd.agency.
Please credit Wall of Sound and Clinton Hatfield if you repost photos.

Pincer+