ENTOMBED A.D.

ABORTED/BAEST THE DOME, LONDON

A combination of unruly, upbeat energy and death metal devastation, BAEST aren’t quite at the stage yet where they can bring a room of earlycomers fully under their command. But on tonight’s evidence it’s only a matter of time, as dense, resounding grooves and breakout leads charge up a crowd that’s fully primed for circlepit mayhem as soon as ABORTED hit the stage. Bringing their own Halloween vibe with skeletons in cages and alien heads on spikes, the ridiculously tight, scorchedearth battery becomes more than the sum of its barely perceptible parts. Propellerblade blasts are ratcheted up to imminent threat levels, tensile riffs are rerouted as through they were some ravenous entity charging through a labyrinth and Sven de Caluwé’s array of bellows and multiplepersonality hog snorts combine to form a state of bewildering, orgiastic delirium that rips through the Dome like a tornado. If they’re a hard act to follow, entombed a.d. prove that old-school class is ageless and unstoppable. The tempo is shifted down to a perennially catchy groove, but the dirt-encrusted guitar tone is still a thing of sense-enrapturing wonder, LG Petrov lurching through new tracks and classics Wolverine Blues and Left Hand Path like life, and death metal, depended on it. JONATHAN SELZER