Reviews
Dimebag Tribute Night
Monkey Bar - 15th January 2005
15th Jan at the Monkey Bar , the stage was set in place to honor Metal Guitarist 'Dimebag' Darrell Abbott , so tragically shot while performing on stage with his band Damageplan . Dimebag will be remembered for many reasons to many people , but definitely to most people for his killer riffs and amazing guitar work while playing in Pantera , who have influenced countless numbers of bands and guitarists . It was only fitting that Perth's finest metal bands took the stage to belt out some good old Pantera covers in memory of the man .
Plague. I've not seen these guys before but they totally ripped up the stage.
Fantastic band to watch, wicked chops and the front person commands an awesome
persona .Very Technical, good songs, and very very tight .Their cover of Becoming
was spot on, possibly the most well done cover of the night. I had great time
admiring the chops of the entire band, especially the drummer who pulled out
some of the most insane double-kicking I've seen in a while. As I mentioned,
my other pick of the night.
By Roland for www.perthbands.com
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CD Review taken from pyromusic.net
Chances are Aussies will be familiar with the opening 3 minute sample that builds up to the explosive first riff assault of 'Higher Moral Ground' (from Mark 'Chopper' Read for those wondering). Odds are a tad slimmer however that Aussies will be familiar with once-quintet now-quartet Plague. I'd come across the name on many occasions thanks to the success of their debut self-titled album which saw the light of day 8 years back but hadn't really had a chance to hear more than one or two tracks from it and to be honest, I didn't know a second album was even in the works but here it is, recorded, mixed and mastered and sitting in front of me. So how does it stack up against some of the already well-established Aussie death metal acts...?
...pretty damn well. There are 10 tracks on 'Higher Moral Ground', and although the album is over in just 32 minutes, the songs it contains are very solid and stand strong on their own. Plague don't stray too far from the norm with any of the songs (save one), rather they stick to a proven stylistic formula and focus on delivering a refined sound that is sure to please the ears of many a death metal fan. The vocals sound like a combination of death and hardcore, lacking just a tad of the brutality often associated with death metal but they compliment the music quite well which itself is a little less heavy than you might expect from a band bearing the death metal tag. Songs feature a slew of time changes and other elements one would associate with say technical death metal and also a few touches that most closely remind me of hardcore (though they are very subtle) but the overall sound is characteristic of death metal.
The only real downer on the entire album is when Plague do briefly have a dabble at another style with oddly spoken lyrics appearing in parts of the final track 'Better To Burn'. Not cool. The song redeems itself with a solid finish, rounding off a pretty damn decent album full of twisted riffs and a good number of solos, plenty of chugg chugg, drum drum, scream scream action an overall slightly cleaner sound to it than your average death metal release. There are some real standout tracks, 'Harm' being my pick of the bunch. Support Aussie metal, check out Plague and see what you think. Personally I'd say they're certainly worth giving a shot. If you do pick up the CD make sure to chuck it into your computer and check out the video clip for the title track. - pyro