Article and Photos by: Adrienne Row – Smith

Ottawa, Ontario – Heavy metal once again entered the nations capital, this time in the form of The Zenith Passage, Beyond Creation, and the main attraction, Austrialian based Psycroptic.

Ottawa natives, …From The Deep, opened the night off enticing the crowd with their experimental grove metal. Their Facebook page lists some of their influences as Opeth and Messuggah, which is apparent in their Ep, The Abusrd Horror, where they seamlessly switched from melodic jazz fusion to in your face metal. Their set list pulled from their new Ep, and translated into a live show that had vocalist Graham Cwinn down on his knees letting you into his soul and then transitioning into him literally punching himself to convey the anger and frustration of his lyrics. While a broken string put a temporary damper on the energy of their set, as soon as the problem resolved itself they were back in action.

Taking up the mantel that …From The Deep left behind, California natives The Zenith Passage played a fast and heavy set that got the crowd moshing as soon as they began. Drummer Luis Martinez lead the charge for the band, smashing on his kit, while vocalist Greg Hampton and guitarist Justin Mckinney and Rob Maramonte filled in the void between blasts with powerful vocals and slick guitar riffs. They played a set not only focused on their recently released effort, Solipist, but also treated fans to old favorites as well. Their set while only 30 minutes, passed by in a blink of an eye, living behind a crowd pumped for Beyond Creation.

Montreal based juggernauts known to the world as Beyond Creation, are always a personal favorite of the heavy metal community in Ottawa. Mavericks Bar was packed end to end for their set, with the crowd singing and moshing to every single note that was played. Beyond Creation played their groundbreaking “Omnipresent Perception”, as well as “Earthborn Evolution”, two pieces which infuse the technical prowess found within the jazz world with epic breakdowns and guttural vocals of death metal.

Beyond Creation and fans alike were so caught up in the music, that they went over their set time. However, fans undeterred and in want of more of their jazz death metal fusion, screamed for “one more song”, to which lead singer Simon Girard shook his head, but emphasized that the band would be back soon.

At exactly  10:10 pm, the headliners took to the stage, preparing to fill the need of an encore that Beyond Creation die hard fans needed, the Psycroptic ripped into Echoes to Come, the first track off of their 2015 self-tilted album. From the get go the band caused the room to be filled with individuals screaming the lyrics with stand in vocalist Jason Keyser (vocalist for the band Origin). Feeding off the energy, Keyser and the rest of Psycropitc broke out into windmills and head banging. Playing a set mostly made up of songs from the self titled release, Psycroptic was generous to throw in a few old favorites, as this was their first time in awhile playing Ottawa.

With no barrier between him and his fans, Keyser insisted that everyone take a chance and stage dive, crowd surf and start circle pits in order to fully capture the energy of the music and make is a night to remember. As soon as one brave fan broke the ice, fans from all over the room rushed to the stage to take advantage of the experience that Psycroptic provided, an atmosphere of heavy metal. One fan even crowd surfed to Keyser and provided him with a beer, which sent the room into a flurry of heavy moshing. The night ended with a bang, with the band packing up their equipment as the crowd cheer for five minutes straight demanding for “just one more song”.