Karen Ponzio Photo
Xenosis
“I like having shows on dates that people will remember,” said musician Mark Lyon on why he chose Feb. 2 for a triple bill of death metal advertised as “A Very Brutal Groundhog Day” at The State House this past Saturday night, including his band Xenosis.
“I mean, it’s Groundhog Day, and that movie? Who doesn’t love Bill Murray?,” Lyon added. “I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t love Bill Murray?”
One might say the same about Lyon, who talked about what Xenosis has been up to in the past year, since the release show for the band’s album Devour and Birth. He then spent most of the rest of the evening — when he wasn’t playing guitar with his band — chatting, hugging and dancing with seemingly everyone there.
“We had lots of press worldwide and sold CDs in a couple dozen different countries,” said Lyon. “We also put out our first official music video,” for the song “Night Fall.” Lyon said they had only played about three gigs since the release show “because we don’t want to oversaturate” and also because “it can be hard to keep the set tight and learn new music” as the band has been working on a few new songs.
“It’s complicated music, but I love playing it,” he said with a big smile. He also loves listening to it and playing it with his friends, and noted that they had played with each of the supporting bands at other gigs this past year and was excited to hear them both again.
First to take the stage was Incontinence, a four-piece band from Albany, N.Y. that opened with vocalist and guitarist Dave Seacord yelling into the mic, “Welcome to death metal night!” Between songs from their last release — 2017’s Prey for Us, including “Inner Psychopath” (“this one is about someone everybody knows,” said Seacord) — and their 2014 release Infected Paranoid Minds easily warmed up the crowd for the rest of the evening with their guttural yet melodic onslaught of metal madness. Seacord engaged the audience in between songs, asking if they were having a good Groundhog Day and announcing that the groundhog had predicted an early spring.
“Fuck winter,” someone said. Everyone laughed, and once again the light and lovely moments in between the heavy and hard moments of music brought the collective consciousness of the crowd closer together.
The second band, Solium Fatalis from New Hampshire, tore right into its blistering set heavy with guitar solos and heart-pounding beats that swept furiously into the growing crowd and carried them closer to the stage with songs such as “Corruptor” and “The Undying Season” from the band’s 2015 album of the same name, as well as songs from its most recent release, Genetically Engineered to Enslave. Lyon probably described it most succinctly: “That band just melted my face off,” he said.
Xenosis came to the stage last, five members strong and with a crowd gathering up front and ready to do the bidding of vocalist Sal Bova, who jumped off the stage during the first song and many more times during the set — though sometimes all it took was a raising of his arms to get the crowd even more fired up, bodies eventually being thrown against one another and many more nodding their heads furiously and moving along to the almost non-stop throbbing beats from bassist Dave Legenhausen and drummer Gary Marotta, punctuated by the intricate string work of both Lyon and guitarist Ken Bullard.
Lyon, ever kind, took time to shout out not only the other bands but also members of the audience who came from out of town and others that he plays with in the band Phat Astronaut. By this band’s final numbers, which included “Devour and Birth.” Xenosis and the other bands had in their own way helped the crowd be born again, the brutal darkness of winter exorcised for this one night with the promise of a new season just a bit closer.
“This is why we are all here,” Dave Seacord of Incontinence said earlier, “to support each other and support the community.”
