Review: The Faceless, Origin, Goatwhore ‘Slaughter’ Saturday In Chicago

For seven years Summer Slaughter has mixed and mashed bands across subgenres. Alumni of the tour will know that it’s a big, juicy, hairy one: more than seven hours over more than 20 dates and ten bands. Those numbers alone will salt your tastebuds! More than quantity, what’s important is Summer Slaughter’s focus on diversity. We can all sit and listen to different strains of metal, but it takes an actual in-person showcase of these differences to really drill the True Meaning of Metal into your brain.

So during my brain-fill at the tour’s stop in Chicago (ahem, Joliet) on July 2, I absolutely relished in the smorgasbord lineup. It spanned the blackened thrash of Goatwhore to the slam-and-glam of Thy Art Is Murder to the infirm lunacy of Origin to the mouth-agape technicality of The Faceless. The first few acts played relatively short sets (omg, Fallujah only three songs!) and the big-namers each rocked for nearly twice as long. Despite the frequent reset downtime between acts, the flow was fluid.

And a collective love for all the bands was plentiful. Among young and old (an all-ages show), there was little shit-talking, pissy faces, or wankery. Maybe when divergent types of metal join at one event, metal fanship can be united not divided! It felt like a true “coming together” — and for some, a learning experience — at the family’s dinner table of metal dishes. For example, Thy Art Is Murder moved even me, especially after the more traditional brutality of Goatwhore. Oh, and The Faceless is a fuckton heavier than you’d expect — a perfect counterpoint to Decrepit Birth’s unexpected fluency. Origin stood out as the true crowd-stirrer of the night. Each band played a part. Great line-up.

It’s that collective energy that perpetuates heavy music, and through comparison and contrast can we really cultivate tastes and appreciation. A competition between bands drove the crowd and individuals to deeper levels of joy. It’s no longer a show full of death metal dudes + thrash metal dudes + slamcore dudes + smelly nu-metal dudes, it’s metal dudes (oh and some chickas as well, hey). And perhaps that’s what makes Summer Slaughter so damn sexy — the ability to unite us all among diversity. It’s sure as fuck what makes metal so damn sexy.

Summer Slaughter continues tonight in Manhattan. Tickets here.