Live Review: Fallujah, Hollow World, Dyssidia

Is Monday the least 'metal' night of the week? Undoubtedly. But the brutal delights this particular Monday serves up make a mockery of that notion. Still, the fact that it's the start of a working week means a very early start, to expedite an early finish, and Radelaide boys Dyssidia burst out of the blocks at 7.30pm when many people are probably still eating dinner. But that doesn’t matter, for there is still a rather respectable roll-up to watch them slam out their mind-bending prog metal.

The sound in The Workers Club is ever excellent, and for once all of Dyssidia’s vocals and instrumentation have presence and definition across the audio spectrum. Guitars and bass are strong, the drums are pounding and punchy, the keys can actually be heard, which lends this band’s sound just a touch of very welcome symphonic majesty, and frontman Mitch Brackman’s cleans are crisp and sweet, and his dirties are suitably hellish. He utilises some magical falsetto this evening too, which actually remind one of someone like Clint Boge from The Butterfly Effect, which is insanely high praise and shows off his versatility as well as his passion.

Melbourne's Hollow World really do takes things to extremities. Their take on extreme metal has just a touch of proggy goodness to it, which keeps it interesting. The vocals juxtapose death-metal howls and black-metal screeches, and blast beats abound, although they also know how to drop back a gear to a meaty groove and add a brief-but-welcome wash of melody on occasion, too. The heavily triggered double kicks are a little overpowering initially, but they are reeled in slightly and, by their third or fourth tune, everything is sitting nicely and they put on a commanding set.

Now, Fallujah. The intensity that this San Franciscan quintet projects at an audience is inhuman, it is unrelenting, but they manage to pull it off with sheer class and a wondrous sense of dynamics at the same time. Their live set is expertly controlled chaos, fury and insanity, and the infernal icing on the diabolical cake is the face-rupturing voice of frontman Alex Hofmann. It seriously does sound as if it's been dredged up from the deepest demonpits of hell. Musically, while their songs are truly complex, nuanced and multi-faceted, their music creates such a powerful-but-intangible pulse, such a strong heartbeat, as well. This is kinda indescribable and indefinable, and this scribe's not sure if they actually consciously design their music this way, or whether it just happens, but it is definitely there. You just have to experience it to recognise it and be moved by it.

This night they draw heavily from their stupendous latest album Dreamless, however they do not neglect their first two albums either. And everything is received with rapturous applause, and horns and fists thrust violently to the sky, from the adoring, packed-out crowd this night. To see this band in such a tiny and intimate venue on a warm, early autumn Monday night in Melbourne is a magical and wonderful experience.