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STORMRIDER
Heavy Metal Festival 2021
Live Review

(16th August 2021)

Review by Chris Reid

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Stormrider Heavy Metal Festival is a long standing event for the WA heavy music scene. Over the years the festival style event has carved out a niche by catering  exclusively to fans of Traditional/Power/Thrash/Prog metal sub-genres. However after a Covid inflicted hiatus in 2020 the promoters have relaxed the genre prerequisite and have allowed some diversity and extreme metal styles on the bill – I’d assume this decision was geared to ensure the quality of the line-up meets the usual lofty Stormrider standards, without being able to include the handful of interstate bands that generally grace the Stormrider line-up.

The 2021 festival was  postponed back in July due to a COVID lockdown, but thankfully there were no such issues for the 2nd date.  Due to the logistics associated with the reschedule the festival has made a return to its original (and spiritual?) home at the Civic Hotel (the renovated back room is now known as ‘the Milk Bar’) after a run of more recent shows at Badlands Bar.

Unfortunately due to the change in date I was unable to attend the entire show, but I was able to catch the last 3 bands on the bill including 1 hour long sets from the co-headliners;

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Thrashers Cold Fate played their set as a 4-piece due to the COVID rescheduling impacting the availability of one of their guitarists. Cold Fate play a shred-heavy brand of Thrash (ala Testament) that is centered around their duel axe attack! Rather than strip their sound back completely  they opted to play their set with a backing track containing the 2nd guitar line (in lieu of the missing member). All in all Cold Fate played a high quality, super enjoyable set despite the backing track creating some short lived technical difficulties on the stage and behind the mixing desk.  The band rattled off numerous tracks from their long awaited 2nd Album which surely can’t be too far away from its release. The song writing and chops contained in this new material is really impressive – their set at Stormrider has certainly whet my appetite for the new album which is shaping to be the best Thrash Album released by a band from Perth in decades.

Next up were the Stormriders themselves, Silent Knight. Seeing Silent Knight play a set at Stormrider is akin to seeing the All-Blacks play at Eden Park – the Stormrider crowd is their ‘home crowd’.

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Silent Knight opened their 1 hour set with the track Dethrone Tyranny, a Gamma Ray cover which the band released as a single back  in 2019 . It was an unexpected but welcome surprise – a great way to kick things off. It would be sacrilegious to review a Silent Knight set without waxing lyrical about Cameron Nicholas on lead guitar – there is no doubt his speed and chops are world class. Seeing him play back to back sets with Cold Fate and Silent Knight was a treat for fans of shred guitar. Speaking of back to back sets, power house drummer Seb Giorgi was filling in on drums for the SK set and didn’t miss a beat – anchoring the high speed assault with precision, power and flair. Silent Knight have a new album ‘in the can’ and they treated fans to 3 new tracks; Full Force, Blood In The Water & Dark & Mysterious Times. All three tracks were very well executed and received.

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I’ve only caught the band on one other occasion since their New Front man Dan Brittan joined the band. On that occasion (Slayfest 2021) Silent Knight were let down by the mix/production to the point that I wasn’t able to gauge whether outgoing vocalist Jesse Onur Oz had been suitably replaced.  On this occasion however Aidan Barton was handling the live mix, and subsequently the live production allowed the band to shine.  Dan Brittan contains a powerful falsetto and he stalked the stage like a caged lion (back and forth) all set long – he did the older material justice and was particularly impressive on the new material.  

I tried long and hard to come up with a witty one liner that would link the act of Stu McGill cutting off his flowing locks with the band deciding to release a power metal cover of Lady Gaga’s hit Bad Romance. The joke is on me however,  because Stu is looking mean like a Load-era James Hetfield and their fans seemed to go nuts for the Gaga cover! Gaga aside, the set contained more than enough of my favourites to keep me happy – Personal highlights were the mid paced chugger Pay Your Dues, long time staples Masterplan & Evil is Thy Name and the closing number/band anthem Power Metal Supreme.  It was a very enjoyable set.

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Headliners Chaos Divine closed the night out in style, playing a set that contained plenty of new and old fan favourites. Their latest album Legacies was well represented in their hour long set and that was fine by me – the album does a good job of covering off on most of the vast dynamic range that the band have at their disposal – the new tracks allow them to show their full capability live. Chaos Divine are an exceptionally well-rehearsed band, who present themselves with a polish that is world-class in my eyes. The subtlety and restraint in their brand of progressive metal is formidable and the musicianship across the board is first rate – whilst they might not play with the speed of the previous act, they are no less impressive – It’s a treat to be able to go and see both bands at what is essentially a suburban pub with a TAB! Highlights of the set (and personal highlights of the night generally) were One Door, Africa (absolutely epic Toto cover) and their well-loved classic Refuse the Sickness from their 2008 full length Avalon.  Formed in 2005, Chaos Divine are only a handful of years away from a 20th anniversary show which is crazy to me – I swear it was only a few years ago that I first saw them playing at Curtin Uni Tav!

Thrash, Power, Prog – whilst I apologise to the other bands for not being able to cover their sets, it does seem fitting that the bands that I did get to catch were all true to the original genre-intent of Stormrider Festival. Despite a global pandemic the festival continues to grow and evolve and is no doubt one of the highlights of the gig-calendar for heavy metal fans in Perth.

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STORMRIDER
HEAVY METAL FESTIVAL 2021
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AMNPLIFY – DB