This was my first concert to review since, forever! Till now I do have the chills of getting dressed in my black t-shirt, setting up my little blue notebook and black pen, and most importantly the well-known and my personal trademark: The grey vest.

First, let me tell you why it deserved the name “The wicked Friday”:

Our one and only Lina El-Gohary was exposed to bad news as her father passed away two weeks before the concert. We had to ask for a substitute: FotoLigia’s help leaded by the well known concert photographer Tootee Faied, to be stunned by the hurtful news of losing her mother just less than a week before the gig along with my own uncle passing away!

Still not convinced?

Prior to that vocalist Sayed Ragai of Sinprophecy is set to have a knee surgery on the background of a really old moshpit injury.

So simply, put it: Concert VS. Fate!

For those who didn’t realize, the only band that was non-melodic death or doom was Devour. Still they packed in a huge punch to the sleepy, yet music hungry crowd of the day. Electricity was in the air as it’s the summer season opener; it started a bit late as usual along with some organizing issues – thanks for the professionalism, Sawy Culturewheel! – Which made many people even more fed up with this atmosphere.

Stepped in to find Metamorphia finishing up ‘Clouds of Agony’ growled by Zander of Destiny in Chains – tell you what? Chit chats around the arena said there wasn’t a fixed vocalist, that’s why the first track was featuring a new star Ahmed Derbawy or as many of you remember him as “The guy from the audience who sang with Sinprophecy last time they did a concert” or simply “Mokka” again with Zander. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to build a complete judgment for the reasons above, but those are my pointers:

– Sayed Ragai of Sinprophecy featured a track called ‘Roads to perdition’ and ‘Maestro of destruction.’ By: Yory Hatem.

– Derbawi was amazing as he was the dark horse for the whole crowd. Kudos, my boy!

– Zander also was the throat behind ‘Purified’ as well.

– The band – excluding the bassist – are former members in other bands at the same gig.

– Youssef ‘Joe’ the drummer was a real blast machine! And he is the first drummer bigger than his drum set as well.

Up next was the joyful and stunning Devour those who are a mixture of good ol’ bands like Wyvern, Karma, and T.H.E – led by Ragi Akram, they played a set of alternative metal tracks some of them are now well known like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Scars’ and ‘Freak’ which is mainly dedicated to those who stereotype others and in this state: Metalheads VS. Society. You can check “Freak” through here.

Continuing with their music you feel the same anger vibe you get listening to Breaking Benjamin or Three Days Grace; those old tongues of the youth, people fell in love with each and every second of Devour‘s act, powered up by Omar Assem’s progressive bass lines and Omar Damien’s skilful solos throughout the rest of the orgasmic set:

– Worthless.
– Patronize.
– Ablaze.
– Reflections.

And boys…? We think you should record those tracks.

Familiar growls gathered scattered fans to the arena to attend a feast of melodic death/doom delivered by Sinprophecy opened by an intro linked to ‘Tears of a sinner’… and necks started to fire up. By: Yory Hatem.

Doom-ish atmosphere ruled starting with the next track, which was ‘Farewell bird of prey’, personally I call this track the most spectacular track ever played live by the band EVER! The same grief and power over and over translated in brutal breakdowns back-grounded with well-conducted keyboard tunes, sailing in a neck breaking cloud of doom/death song. I just love it!

The surprise-fanatic band after that play a brand new single ‘The Midnight Walker’, an atmospheric doom track most people didn’t really like as Sayed Ragai literally “sings” in this track which was a bit weird. ‘Roots of Bleak’ came next to treat doom lovers to the limit, once it ended the crowd screamed asking for ‘The Summoning’ and they have got it with a little surprise; Mishmish of Metamorphia was back-vocaling this time! Like –the band- had an agreement to never do the track without outer cooperation. Giving closure to the gloomy night played ‘Spectrum Illusion’ and last but not least ‘You’re The One Who’ll Smile At My Funeral’. And YES, it was intentional to make the set list doom oriented as per the band themselves after the gig.

Speaking of surprises, do you know what does Segadoras mean?
It actually means “Grim Reapers” in Spanish! That will give you an indicator why they looked that way on-stage.

All dressed up in grim reaper’s hood and cloak, the night’s modern melodic death act ruled the stage, jump starting by ‘My existence’ then ‘The ultimate sacrifice’. To stop here and point out some headlines is necessary, as it was plain to who has eyes that the little guy with long hair holding the bass guitar is where he belongs – regardless of lack of movement caused by really tight cloak he wore – this really young guy will go places for him loving his music that much. To the other side of him we had a fresh face called “Leo”, the very silent new live keyboardist of the band.

And of course behind them and leading the band through the track list was Michael Khater one of the oldest drummers in Egypt playing with Karma, Beyond East, and Varden along the road. And by the way Michael had his share of bad luck as he fell off the back of the stage when he was settling over his throne of drums to hurt his knee and having to spray it with spray anesthetic between tracks.

Female vocals are always valuable gems in any band, so we had the chance to behold Lady Rose with the band in a couple of tracks – she was a bit shaky from stage fright; however, she did okay but not to the point that grabs attention.

Along with their signature track ‘The Rise’ joined Gasser, the new oriental voice in the band, glowing better than last time with Segadoras that was a bit unlucky for him. This time he owned the Arabic lines and made it harmonized inside the song. Well done!

Remember the screamer who came side by side with Gasser? All the vocalists acknowledge this monster in this day as “A designated grinde core vocalist”. The name is Scott Tyler, await him

Will the band take my advised and lose the makeup as it looks like corpse paint? No? A’ight!

The main fault – yet power house – that the band plays really complicated and multi-layered melodies but yet they seize to master it onstage, that’s why the audience agreed that for them to really judge they will need to have this music on CD’s. And it was my lucky day to overhear Bahaa’ the band’s vocalist telling someone that they will enter the studio in one month, so here is the news ladies and gentlemen!

Their track list was as follows:

– Ultimate sacrifice.
– The reaping.
– Undefeated.
– The Rise.

Stay very tuned for other gigs this season as we still have more to come and more to review, until we meet folks.

Reviewed by: Ahmed A. Atteya
Photography brought to you by: Lina El Gohary

Edited by: NJ Bakr

Back to downtown, Cairo, the same place Metal Station took place – Rawabet theater, anticipation was surrounding this one concert with a “Too heavy to handle” bands who agreed on taking a leap of faith towards spreading a very tight Metal map – moving their music, their audience’s land – in a move even we didn’t see coming. The unspoken agreement between most of the Egyptian bands does never stop pleasing and delivering music to fans.

I was running solo this time which gave me more time to snoop around Rawabet. The number of supporting musicians didn’t go down by time and by multiple gigs in a matter of weeks. Many names from such as Origin, Medic, MaScaRa, Destiny In Chains and others showed up supporting their buddies and encouraging the fans.

Starting THE RETURN was Invaders with the same set list we listened to rocking out earlier in Enraged & Ivaders: Leave your sanity at the door, same line-up and vocals, and a plus point for sounding better this time.

After that was Enraged’s same insanity we saw back in El Sawi Culture Wheel: Leave your sanity at the door, the set list didn’t have any changes. This band is that crazy.. and good. But still crazy!

Scarab’s Sammy Sayed made his appearance as “Mr. Skizzle Zee” who scared the hell out of many fresh faces, it was a hell of a scene to watch the “what-the-hell-is-that?!” look on their faces. Notable at the end that the female vocal Rasha wasn’t at her best that night, hard luck ma’am.

The sound system was pretty impressive, but there was something very wrong with its engineer, you could clearly hear glitches and sound issues as the gig went on.

Spotlights from behind the scenes:
Enraged‘s Wael O invited a bunch of little stray kids, who were trying to discover the place to watch from the stage side.

The whole house was very cooperative, a new spirit was compelling all the people of metal to work together. For example: Ismaeel of Crescent went to fans and told them to hurry inside for Enraged was gonna start.

Back to the massacre, and more sound issues while the Melodic DeathDoom machines SINPROPHECY, with notable solid guitar playing from Fada’y and Sheva the Axe holders. They started with “Tears of A Sinner” followed by “Calling the Undead”; both you can check out below.

Suddenly Sayed calls for Zander (D.I.C) on stage, hands him a mic, and “End of The Tyrant” blows out in our faces. Things everyone noticed about both of them, is Sayed started using pure Death Metal’s well-paced vocaling style, on the other hand Zander proved his true transition from a normal Metalcore front man to a full geared Deathcore vocalist, such sound ruined by an awful mic settings that brought out the dryness of his voice. Needless to say, it was louder than the music. You can check out the track below:

Next track was painful. The whole band admitted they over-played themselves doing it this time, because you can’t play your friend’s farewell while smiling and looking badass. “Farewell bird of prey” is one of SINPROPHECY’s new masterpieces according to a quick survey we did with the audience. Back to the song, it was hurtful. It was full of emotions and anger, the anger of losing a brother who all of us will never see again, Mahmoud Sakr who was a remarkable Death Metal vocalist himself back in the days with his band WORM, try to mix all those meanings into one song and it won’t be different than this one we are listening to:

Sakr, May your soul rest in peace!

Once again the band use the harmony factor against the pure DeathDoom you expect. And yes, they successfully proved themselves as a skilled musical group. After that they played “Spectrum Illusion” from the upcoming album, followed by signature track “The Summoning” with a little surprise: Sayed actually didn’t sing it. He back-vocaled one of the audience called Ahmed Derbawy, a move that grabbed attention and respect of all fans. The guy was impressive, he was taken by surprise but did a tight performance himself.

It would be awkward and depressive to attend a DeathDoom act without enjoying a Doom-ish touch, right?

This is when they decided doing another new track, “You Are the One Who Will Smile at My Funeral”, I’m not by any means a Doom Metal fan, but the audience liked it, a soothing one after the previous tracks.

And guys? Where is Hiba the female vocalist?

The last to conquer the stage was the fan-crowned “The Egyptian equivalent of BEHEMOTH”, the Blackened Death Metal band CRESCENT, one of the oldest bands in the whole Egyptian music scene. Their comeback was established with the upcoming album “Pyramid Slaves” which we had two inside looks on it from the freshly released play through video for the main track, and a streaming track for “An ode to Qadish“.

Sound issues took the band a bit out of concentration but they pulled off a beefy set of tracks such as: An ode to Qadish, Ra men-kheper, Gates of the sun, Temple of the divine gods and Pyramid Slaves.

Their music is still new to most of Egyptian listeners who are more familiar with breakdowns and melodic stuff, but a too-heavy-to-ignore music like Blackened Death is still in the phase of standing still to listen closely and judge. But no worries CRESCENT, you are on the right path.

Thanks to Mr. Mahmoud Amr, for his outstanding efforts on documenting most of the tracks played across the gig. You sir are the man!

Thanks to the ladies Yara Weheba and Doaa Mohamed. Especially Yara for providing some of the coolest shots of the bands in such short notice.