Dethfest Melbourne was an 8-hour long event at The Corner Hotel on the 9th of March, where local talents and notable names performed for death metal fans in Melbourne.
The event went from around 16:00 to 00:00. Though I only arrived at around 20:15, I still got to watch the performance of a few of the remaining bands perform and generate an awesome sound for the audience to hear. Pestilential Shadows and Gutless, both being bands I have not heard from before, managed to hook me in with their technical playing and heavy tones. The stage brings out the best of their sounds and is actually quite difficult to bring a similar impact with studio recordings. All that makes me appreciate the fact that I was able to attend these live performances, as being there live is just incomparable to any other way of listening. Though it is quite unfortunate that I forgot my earplugs that night, and had to bear the loud noises in a small venue, which also withheld me from going close to the stage.
Of course, the main event of the night was Left To Die, a tribute band to Death. Death, and most notably Chuck Schuldiner is often dubbed as The Grandfather of Death Metal. For having introduced to the world a new style of metal that is unlike anything heard before. All the records produced by Death are amazing and hold strong music experimentation, pioneering different sounds and taking death metal to new levels. Unfortunately, Chuck passed away in 2001, 3 years after Death’s final album. This event caused a lot of heartbreak within the metal sphere, as his influence and legacy was very wide-reaching. People have recounted Chuck to be a good man with a good mind following a good life, and it is honestly such a sad realisation that we won’t be able to hear anything new from Chuck’s musical ingenuity and innovation.
Both Left to Die and Death have never toured down in Australia before. Dethfest 2025 marks a very special event for Australian death metal fans as they will finally hear their favourite Death songs be performed live, by very talented musicians, two of which were Death alumni; Rick Rozz and Terry Butler.
Left To Die performed amazingly and with respect to the original studio recordings, to preserve the original sound that fans wanted to hear, for the very first time. They played songs from their first two albums: Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy. Both albums capture the classic, old-school death metal sound that Chuck has engineered and served as a foundation for not only Death’s future albums, but the sound of death metal altogether. Hearing the songs live brought out a lot of joy in me as a fan of Death and it makes me feel like I was attending a very special event, one that was honouring Chuck even over 20 years later. Both the band and audience shared and spread their love of Chuck Schuldiner throughout that night, honouring and appreciating him; the good feelings and everyone enjoying Death together was enough to make any Death fan emotional. If you are a fan of Death, Left To Die is a band definitely worth seeing performed live - they love Chuck as much as you do.
That night was definitely a night to remember, and an important night for death metal fans in Melbourne. I am really glad I went to Dethfest.
Rest in peace, Chuck.