Cult Leader Delivers Stunning Metal Performance in Austin (SHOW REVIEW)

Extreme metal band Cult Leader might originally hail from Salt Lake City, Utah, but their sound seems more likely to have been borne either in the fiery depths or the bitter frost of northern Europe. Touring on their newest record, A Patient Man, they brought their trademark brand of melodic death metal and pummeling hardcore to Austin’s Mohawk on Sunday, December 16 in a late contender for one of the most stunning metal shows of the year.

The experimental metal kicked off with Austin’s own Street Sects, who have made a name for themselves locally as industrial metal gods. Taking the stage with blinding lights and merely the shadows of their bodies appearing before the audience, playing around with samples and wielding a chainsaw, it would be easy to write Street Sects off as smoke and mirrors, but this belies their crushing and ostentatious sound. The visual performance art only serves to enhance the intensity of their sound.

Serving as the direct support for Cult Leader was Sweden’s God Mother. Signed by Party Smasher, Inc, and promoted by Ben Weinman of the Dillinger Escape Plan, God Mother actively lives up to the torch that has been passed their way by the mathcore pioneers. Their radical stage presence, led by the insane flailing of front man Sebastian Campbell, who spent more time in the crowd than on stage, is directly influenced by Weinman and his cohorts, but their music more closely resembles classic hardcore bands like Botch and Converge. They made their manic mark on Austin a few years ago during South by Southwest, and their return was equally as fantastic. This being their first full US tour, God Mother are well on their way to becoming one of the bigger acts in the entire scene if they keep this frenetic pace up.

Cult Leader then came on and tore the house down. The band, which rose from the ashes of the legendary band Gaza, could easily have been just another extreme metal band, and they certainly play that sort of thing very well. Their maniacal opening song, and lead single from A Patient Man, “I Am Healed” is the exact kind of barn burner you would want and expect from a band of this nature. But what sets Cult Leader apart and makes them truly special is their melody and their slow, moody torch songs. “To: Achlys,” with its haunting, droning clean vocals and heartbreaking guitar notes left the crowd spellbound.

After gut punches like “Great I Am” and “Mongrel,” Cult Leader again slowed the pace down to close out the show with “The Broken Right Hand of God,” the closer from A Patient Man. This ended up being truly the most magical moment of the set. The post-apocalyptic tone of the song, the wrenching melody with front man Anthony Lucero’s desperate screams over it, almost put one in a trance. It’s this hypnotizing element to their sound, which evokes the aftermath of a great battle, that makes Cult Leader a truly special band in a scene full of good but not great metal bands churning through chugging riff after chugging riff.

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