Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse Co-Headline Decibel Magazine Tour Annihilating Times Square in New York City

 BY MARK SMITTY NEAL | Go Venue Magazine

Located in the heart of New York City’s world famous Times Square is the PlayStation Theater, surrounded by gigantic billboards, neon lights, and thousands of tourist snapping selfies every step of the way. On Thursday, March 7th it was a lot different, the Decibel Magazine Tour made its stop marching hoards of metal maniacs straight through the frontline of the tourist Mecca of the world to the long lines outside the theater for an insane night of extreme death metal with a lineup that included Blood Incantation, Necrot, and veteran co-headliners Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse. 

With Blood Incantation taking the stage first as long lines of fans (myself included) were still in the process of making our way in from the cold outside, it was Necrot up next turning up the heat more as fans continued to pile in from the cold swarming Merch tables and gathering around surrounding bar areas getting settled in before co-headliner Morbid Angel took the stage unleashing a viscous onslaught led by vocalist-bassist Steve Tucker, who along with original founding member guitarist Trey Azagthoth, guitarist Dan Vadim Von, and drummer Scott Fuller, ripped through a savage set that included classics like Blasphemy, Abominations, Unholy Blasphemies to more recents such as Piles Of Little Arms and Garden of Disdain before ending their set with Blood On My Hands.

It was time, the time everybody in the building had been waiting for, the time for Cannibal Corpse to take the stage, it would also be the final show of the tour for Corpse. Opening their set with Code of the Slashers followed by Only One Will Die and the title track Red Before Black, which all three songs are off their most recent LP 2017’s “Red Before Black”. In the crowd it was business as usual for Corpse fans as the bodies flew over the barriers from all directions as security would definitely earn their pay that evening, it would also be time for us all to see how Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan would do on lead filling in for Pat O’Brian which he would quickly prove to have no problems filling that position, death growling at his best frontman George “The Corpsegrinder” Fisher‘s headbanging windmills gave fans whiplash by just watching as they tore through a blistering set from ten of their fourteen albums spanning the bands 25 year career  that included some the best classics like Evisceration Plague, A Skull Full of Maggots, I Cum Blood, Stripped, Raped and Strangled and of  coarse ending the brutality with Hammer Smashed Face.