Cauldron + Holy Grail + Mad Parish @ Il Motore

This just in: thrash is back.

I know what you're thinking: thrash never left, maaaan. Clearly, you were also at Il Motore this past Saturday night for the triumphant return of Cauldron, with Holy Grail and Mad Parish. In fact, you were probably rocking your tight jeans, banging your head and whipping your waist length hair, maybe even rocking a pair of cowboy boots and a bullet belt like the majority of the crowd. With very few exceptions, the audience looked like it had time travelled from a Bay Area bar in 1987, which was extremely surprising given that the median age of the attendees probably hovered around 24 years old.

I'll leave the deep discussions about the hows and whys of the resurgence in popularity of classic sounding thrash, doom and power metal to psychologists and sociologists, but I will say that I almost didn't make it to the show. I felt sick all day, so staying home would have been easier, but I decided to do the real rock'n'roll thing, knocked back a swig of whiskey, and headed for the bar instead... after all, isn't that what Goat Horn would have done?

Fans of the Canadian metal underground will recognize that name, as Goat Horn had a brief but memorable stint as Canada's premier throwback metal band. After the group disbanded in 2006, "true metal" messiah and Goat Horn frontman Jason Decay went on to form Cauldron, a band whose dedication to the traditional metal lifestyle and sound is matched only by Decay himself.

They're currently opening for Prosthetic Records' Holy Grail across Canada and the US, but for this date the order was reversed and Cauldron headlined the night, although I doubt that either band expected to be blown away by the number of people that came to rock out to Mad Parish. Currently working on their debut full length (produced by defender of rock Jonathan Cummins), the local popularity of these boys can't be denied, and it's about time for a release.

The heshers were primed and ready to go by the time Holy Grail took the stage, and they were not disappointed. Conceived by some former members of White Wizzard, Holy Grail are excellent at what they do. Thrash, or perhaps more precisely "traditional" heavy metal, is not known for its subtlety, and while all the bands delivered the kinds of over the top performances required by the genre, Holy Grail managed to best capture the flashy guitar work, extreme hair whipping, and vocal acrobatics that still draw people to it after all these years. The weirdest thing about them, however, were their biggest fans. Sticking out like sore thumbs in the sea of long haired metal diehards, a group of clean cut, short haired, barely pubescent kids in preppy clothes were singing along and slamdancing in a makeshift pit... The effect was surreal, like watching Pantera rock an Eastern European school dance.

After a full headlining set, Cauldron took the stage for theirs, which was sadly much too short. Nonetheless, they made the most of the time they had, ripping through tracks from their three releases, and finishing with the crowd pleasing "Chained Up In Chains". It was all there: the hair, the synchronized guitars, and the signature song "Into The Cauldron". While the performance had me feeling nostalgic for some of Goat Horn’s greatest hits, I left the bar satisfied, if a little disappointed to be leaving that time warp behind for the grey streets of Montreal in 2011.

To get a feeling for Cauldron, check out their incredibly vintage looking official video here

-Angelica hosts BVST on Wednesday nights from 7-9pm