Arts
Stigmata unleashes metal at its finest
Stigmata live. Pix by Anuradha Bandara
The lights lowered as the smoke crept in. All that lay visible were five dark figures illuminated by the eerie backdrop of old human X-rays. It was that moment everyone had been waiting for. It was time to celebrate ten years of Silent Chaos Serpentine (SCS) – rock band Stigmata’s legendary album.
The riffs kicked off with ‘Swine Maker’, the first song off the SCS record. Suresh de Silva’s powerhouse vocals thundered through the hall. This was certainly not your everyday Stigmata concert and the lack of a stage at the Colombo City Hotel’s ballroom made the performance truly intimate.
The concert was on Saturday, February 27, and the crowd that gathered at the Colombo City Hotel were clearly flag bearers of Sri Lanka’s Heavy Metal Community, clad in their favourite band t-shirts, such as Megadeth, Metallica and Slayer, some with long beards and long hair. To the die-hard Stigmata fans, this was a recreation of the SCS launch concert, a decade ago. And to the younger generation this was pure Sri Lankan metal at its finest.
From ‘Lucid’ and‘My Malice’ to tunes such as ‘Book of skin’(which hadn’t been played in a long while), the band was full of energy that evening.
The songs coupled with some of the band’s newer numbers off ‘The Ascetic Paradox’, which was released nine years after SCS, displayed the band’s journey through time.
Stigmata’s passion for their music and fan base was amplified by lead guitarist, Andrew Obeyesekere, who played with an injured shoulder, owing to an accident that took place the day before. After the show Andrew was spotted putting a sling back on his arm.
Opening the show was Killfeed, performing an original,’ Depths of Hell’. The growling vocals of their frontman Zeusz, backed by Shaffeek Shuail and Suchith Fernando on guitars, Krishan Janaka on Bass and Eshantha Perera on drums, soon got the audience going.
The band ended their set with a stellar cover of Pantera’s ‘Yesterday don’t mean shit’.
Eshantha Perera remained behind the drums as ‘Constellation’ delivered their very own, ‘Children of God’, Eshantha’s clean vocals combining with Saveen Makalanda’s growls -perfectly balanced. They wrapped things up with another original, ‘Devouring the Sun’. The crowd was soon stirred as Mass Damnation took on the driver’s seat for the night. With frontman Ryan Johnson, urging the crowds to go crazy the band delivered a string of original music ranging from ‘Disengaged’ to ‘Hypocrite’ which set off more head banging and fist pounding.
Stigmata’s performance had fans in thrall until the slow groovy bass by Lakmal Wijayagunarathna led the audience to Jazz Theory, the final song of the evening. Suresh was soon joined onstage by all the vocalists of the day, as Rhythm guitarist, Tennyson Napoleon, drummer Roshan Taraka Senewirathne and Andrew unleashed that final moment of chaos.
As the fog kicked in one last time the halls were left echoing “There is nothing that you can do that would change us… or what we are”.
