It had already been roughly a month and a half since my first ever visit to Rillieux-la-Pape's (Lyon) MJC Ô Totem (or rather Ô Totem Live for the live venue side of the infrastructure) on the occasion of Suffocation's "Hymns From the Apocrypha" tour alongside Enterprise Earth, Sanguisugabogg and Organectomy.
My second visit would prove to be motivated by yet another masterclass in death metal, made possible once again by Sounds Like Hell Productions, although this time we would be trading sheer brutality for more progressive and "cerebral" territories in the company of influential progressive death metal masters Cynic with Obscura and Cryptosis as supporting acts.
Although this time around national strikes didn't turn the journey to the venue into an arduous and stressful trip, I did somehow manage to find myself caught in the middle of some sort of rival street gang vendetta on my way there.
Needless to say I was going to enjoy the night's performances that much more after coming out of that ordeal unharmed and just glad to be in one piece really; and so began the night as the Dutch trio Cryptosis took the stage while I enjoyed a well deserved pint.
The first very noticeable thing about Cryptosis was their pretty impressive stage production, which is not very common for a smaller, opening band.
Indeed, as the musicians take their place on the stage, we are introduced to their futuristic sci-fi universe in visual form via a sizeable LED screen projecting the music videos to the corresponding tracks in real-time as well as other visuals made specifically for their live shows.
The lighting, use of smoke machines and prop-like mic stands further add to the effectiveness of the immersion, although the double-edge is that it could sometimes distract a little too much from the performance of the musicians.
But given that they only have two members who are mobile, Laurens Houvast (guitar & vocals) and Frank te Riet (bass & vocals), perhaps that is fully intentional.
When it came to the third member of the trio, Marco Prij (drums), sadly the lights didn't linger on the drumkit all that much, which is a shame since his performance definitely sounded relentlessly high-energy.
I've never been much of a thrash guy but I must say that Cryptosis' modernized spin on the genre tinged with technical death metal influences is highly efficient and kept me invested from start to finish.
A great way to get the energy levels high right away and progressively guide the audience towards more technical territories as the night goes on.
And sure enough, German pillars of progressive death metal Obscura brought the technicality levels up a notch as they shredded their way through a setlist spanning pretty much the entirety of their career so far.
From tracks taken out of their most recent album A Valediction (which they hadn't properly been able to tour because of the Covid pandemic back then in 2021) to tracks taken from their 2009 Cosmogenesis and even cuts they usually don't play live, such as the instrumental "Orbital Elements".
One thing I really like about Obscura is their ability to seemlessly shift between proggier sections that put the emphasis on the melodic components of their style before plunging back into the gnarliest areas of the death metal spectrum at break-neck speed without warning; something which they execute masterfully in a live setting.
Although their stage production was more low-key compared to Cryptosis, the whole band seemed delighted to be playing for us that night and the enjoyment they got out of playing together was noticeable, especially from frontman (and founder) Steffen Kummerer who was happy to exchange with the audience throughout the set despite the language barrier.
(Christian Münzner of Obscura)
Bass often steals the spotlight in Obscura's music (a difficult task amidst so many virtuosic guitar flourishes) and it was no different in a live setting.
Speaking of which, before reaching the end of their set, the band took a moment to celebrate their current bass player, Jeroen Paul Thesseling's birthday, who is now a full-time member of Obscura.
After a quick bite of his birthday cake, Thesseling proceeded to shred his way through set closer "When Stars Collide" on his fretless six string bass in birthday attire (a unicorn horn headband), and just like that, Obscura's set was already over after what felt like a whirlwind of progressive death metal had swept through the walls of Ô Totem Live.
Echoing my previous visit, I opted for a quick pit stop at the event's food truck (Easy Lunch Lyon) before entering Cynic's psychedelic realms of progressive death metal.
And sure enough, the atmosphere became instantaneously otherworldly as soon as Paul Masvidal and the rest of the band began playing through Cynic's half-hour long 1993 debut album Focus in its entirety.
(Cynic)
Having recruited Obscura's Steffen Kummerer for the album's growled vocal parts, the quintet seamlessly weaved their way through the visionary sounds of an album that was way ahead of its time when it first came out and still sounds novel to this day, with its cosmic layered guitar sound design, intricate drumming and Masvidal's alien-like vocals running through a vocoder.
The rather dimly lit stage, abundant smoke and undulating album artwork backdrop reinforced the ethereal, spiritual even, atmosphere Cynic had plunged the venue in, resulting in a rather hypnotic experience for both the eyes and the ears.
As the album reached its conclusion with the revered track "How Could I", Masvidal knelt down at crowd-level for the track's iconic guitar solo ; a memorable conclusion to the Focus half of the set.
To mark the transition between the two different parts of the setlist, the band observed a prolonged moment of silence in honour of both ex-drummer Sean Reinert and ex-bassist Sean Malone who both passed away in 2020.
(Tribute to Sean Malone & Sean Reinert)
As a prolongation of this tribute, the re-imagined accoustic track "Integral" was played to pay homage to the lives and contributions to the band of both past members, which the crowd observed respectfully.
So much so that Paul Masvidal had to break the heavy silence with a bit of light stage banter before pursuing the rest of the setlist composed of select tracks taken from different points in their discography (my personal favourite being "Kindly Bent to Free Us" taken from the 2014 album of the same name).
In order to book-end this remarkable evening, Cynic bid us farewell with two tracks taken from their 2008 album Traced in Air.
As the room fully lit up again and the musicians picked their gear up, it was easy to tell that most of the audience present knew we had just assisted to something very special which, as the band made clear, would very certainly not happen ever again.
And so, aware of this bittersweet knowledge but also genuinely feeling uplifted and more than anything, lucky to have witnessed and shared this moment of transportive progressive heavy music (another massive thanks to Sounds Like Hell Productions is in order for making this happen in our neck of the woods), it was time to head back home...Until next time!