AUSTRALIAN METAL AWARDS

The Forum, Moore Park


Saturday night The Forum in Sydney rolled out the red carpet for the biggest names in Australian metal music. Tuxedo'd luminaries and their glamorous partners courted the cameras as they took their places inside at tables they had paid $450 a ticket for, and a who's who of celebrities kept the crowd entertained with music and comedy.

Like fuck. Sure there was music, and certainly comedy (at the same time, in fact), but instead of the nightmare that would make Cliff Burton turn in his grave and Dimebag return from his and rip shit up, the Australian Metal Awards was mainly a bunch of hard-drinking male metalheads and a pleasingly high percentage of hot metal chicks (including a couple of pseudo-lipstick lesbians who seemed to have made it their mission to flirt with absolutely everyone) watching some bands while every now and then some guy grabbed a microphone and yelled a bunch of stuff no one could understand that was, in fact, the announcement of the night's prize winners. The rumoured appearance of Phil Anselmo never occurred, but Ugly Phil O'Neill turned up for a while and even watched one of the acts. The focus was meant to be the awards themselves, but to be honest the attraction for most was the first (and only) performance by Sadistik Exekution in 10 years. There was a lot of bands in between however, so that meant a lot of drinking at the nearby pub for a lot of people who only came to see the headliners; but that's not to say there wasn't quite a crowd watching the festivities.

The Awards were the labour of love for Matt Willis and Natalie Meisenhelter, who persisted with the idea in spite of all kinds of cynicism and criticism and while technical difficulties on the evening itself forced some last minute changes of plan, things seemed to go rather well from my end of the beer can. Having the award presentation in the roped-off VIP section on the top floor didn't really work though, as no one on the levels below could see or hear what was going on -- it just sounded like a dude yelling things. Also, with Andrew Haug from Triple J, Ugly Phil from MMM, the owner of Utopia and Riot!'s Chris Maric there at different times of the night, I would have thought they could have been utilised as guest presenters. An idea for next year, perhaps?

Bane of Isildur and Eyefear were on early; too early for this reviewer unfortunately, but I did arrive in time to see Geelong's Death Audio. These guys have done some bigger shows around Melbourne over the last year including a few supports with The Red Shore. They're confident and have a pretty talented bass player but while their version of generic metalcore is solidly played and performed it is, to be fair, also solidly generic. Literally dozens of bands are playing this style now and as good as they are, Death Audio don't do anything with it. After them was Five Star Prison Cell, a band I love to watch but can't listen to for longer than a song or two because their time-signature free, 100-riffs-in-two-minutes, zero-melody mathcore spazz-metal attack always threatens to make my brain explode. So I headed outside and caught up with a few people including the singer for one of my favourite ever bands who was already quite pissed indeed.

The next band on the bill were the night's big winners. Despite not even having a record out yet and no real profile outside of Sydney, the death metal band Ouroboros picked up three awards including Best Bassist, Best Drummer and Best Unsigned Band. So they certainly had a lot to prove tonight, especially to everyone who kept saying "What? This guy's better than Dave Haley?" (Haley himself probably doesn't care all that much). Whether such comments are fair or not is really a matter of opinion; Ouroboros are quite good, they have a lot of presence and some decent if not-quite-original songs (one of them sounded quite a lot like Mortal Sin's "Mayhemic Destruction"), but they have still have some way to go before they're headlining their own shows at the Gaelic. After them came Asecretdeath, whose screamo/post-metal/noisecore hybrid didn't seem to gel well at all with many and it seemed that quite a few punters ducked back to the Fox and Lion for a while before the place got filled up with trendies and hipsters.

Chaos Divine followed, the awesome Perth progressive quintet who picked up no less than five awards tonight. It was doubtful if too many people in the room had even heard of these guys before this show but quite a lot of them went away talking about them. And they weren't saying bad things. Rock, death metal and melodic progressive stylings, Chaos Divine blend it like the best of them and should be one of Australia's biggest metal bands before too much longer.

Finally, after a long, long break, the band that almost everyone was there to see -- younger fans who'd never seen them play, older fans who wanted to see them again and curious others who wanted to find out what the fuss was about -- finally came on. If Chaos Divine were the sublime, then Sadistik Exekution were the ridiculous. It may have been ten years since they've played last, but they haven't changed a bit, except that perhaps Rok gets crazier with age. Dave Slave has always billed himself as the mental one of the band (and that's saying a lot), but Rok was off the fucking planet tonight, crawling around on his knees and slapping himself constantly in the head while making spastic noises, ranting and raving, swearing and generally behaving in a totally unhinged fashion. Musically of course, they were as terrible as a band that proudly announces themselves as "the most fucked band in the world" could be, although there were some surprisingly coherent moments like the doomy opener. But they were hilarious. I could hardly stop laughing from the moment they began. Rok was so berzerk that it was difficult to pay attention to what the others were doing and it almost seemed as if the band was having the same trouble sometimes.

Reaction from punters was intriguing. "I can't believe I paid $45 to see this shit!" said one friend. "This is the worst band I've ever seen!" said another, then left. "Does he ever say anything else?" I was asked by one young metaller when Sad Ex had played yet another song where all the lyrics sounded like "Death! Fukk! Metal! Kill! Fukk! Death!" I only smiled. At the end, they played "The Magus" and finally seemed to actually click as a band instead of just four guys making a fuckload of noise. Rok went crazy and Kriss Hades slashed his guitar strings and then smashed the instrument to pieces. It was nuts. Outside afterwards, people didn't seem to know whether they had just seen a very strange band or a very strange circus when really, it was kinda both.

Some of the winners and a few of the bands left people aghast, but aside from the technical hitches the night seemed to be something of a success. Hopefully some of the cynics and critics can shut up now and help out in 2010. With the mountain of killer Australian metal releases that have come out in 2009, there should be more than just a few winners next year.

• Best Metal Fan/Web/Magazine: http://www.metalobsession.net/
• Most Popular Merchandise: Psycroptic
• Best Album Cover: Psycroptic - (Ob)servant
• Best Band Name: Psycroptic
• Best Film Clip: Psycroptic - "Initiate"
• Best Producer/Recording Engineer: Jarrod Hearman (Sing Sing Studios) - Chaos Divine, Avalon
• Best Drummer: Dave Horgan - Ouroboros
• Best Bass Player: Michael Conti - Ouroboros
• Best Keyboards Player: Chris Stevenson - The Eternal
• Best Regional Band: Alchemist
• Best Youth Band: Asphyxia
• Best Export: Psycroptic
• Best Live Band: Psycroptic
• Best Guitarist: Jimmy Lardner-Brown, Killrazer
• Best Vocalist: Dave Anderton, Chaos Divine
• Best New Band: Death Audio
• Song of the Year: Chaos Divine - "Refuse the Sickness"
• Best Unsigned Band: Ouroboros
• Best Album: Chaos Divine - Avalon
• Best Overall Band: Chaos Divine