Beyond the Void
Rivers Of Nihil, Cynic, Beyond Creation, Daath
The Aggressive Progressive Tour at Flex Café, Vienna, Austria 20250324
The cold currents of the Danube Canal were already rumbling on Monday night as I approached Flex Café along the riverbank just before 19:00. By then, the first aggressive riffs from Daath had begun to puncture the soundscape of the city –indeed, more than one incredulous cyclist tried, unsuccessfully, to decipher the dissonant noises erupting from inside the venue.
As usual in Vienna, the program started exactly at the announced time (18:45) and continued just as punctually at 19:35, when the Canadian leyends Beyond Creation took the stage. Both the sound and the execution were impeccable, yet this technical prowess never overshadowed other qualities expected in Tech/Prog Death Metal: killer riffs and hard headbanging. While the Café’s structure itself was not the most suitable for a moshpit, it did little to stop the crowd from exploding into a frenetic dance during the band’s closing tune.
I first heard Beyond Creation in 2011, when on one of those extensive YouTube excursions I encountered a video of Dominic Lapointe, by then bassist of the band, playing “Omnipresent Perception” on his beautifully purring fretless bass. At first I felt something strange but interesting, almost paradoxical, about the fretless tone in Death Metal. But soon I remembered that some of the pioneering albums of Technical and Progressive Death Metal, like Death’s Human (1991) and Individual Thought Patterns (1993) are notable precisely for their fretless sound, in this case from the hands of Steve DiGiorgio. Today I realize that there are entire debates on Reddit on the subject.
The night’s third number also included a fretless bass, but it thrust me back to Human –Death’s landmark– rather through the second guitarist of that album: Paul Masvidal. After the tragic passing away of Sean Reinert and Sean Malone, Masvidal now leads Cynic accompanied by a lineup of top musicians. I was lucky enough to hear them also last year at Reppluged, and as on that occasion, the performance was outstanding. Nevertheless, I must point out that at certain moments there were some issues with the volume of Masvidal’s guitar in the overall mix.
Toward the end of their set, Masvidal shifted to a more personal tone, addressing how relentless the intense tour that the four bands conduct in Europe has been. Now in its final stretch –after Vienna, just five shows remain– the musician admitted how one month on the road felt like six. This reminds us of how exhausting touring can be –something that Konstantin of Woe Unto Me had also commented to me– and the quasi-spirit of sacrifice required to stay active on the scene.
The night closed out with Rivers of Nihil delivering a flawless set of almost an hour. Beyond their technical cleanliness, two elements stood out: First, the live integration of the saxophone that the band successfully incorporated between the double bass drum, the guttural voice, and the heavy riffs in albums like Where Owls Know My Name (2018). Second, Rivers of Nihil’s particular groove ignited not just the night’s second moshpit, but also a crowdsurfing I assumed the venue’s layout would forbid. The Aggressive Progressive Tour proved to me I was wrong.