ORIGIN

Are you into technical Death metal bands that just make you into a raging mosh monkey?  Then Topeka Kansas natives Origin might be the band for you.

Origin have made their latest tour stop to the Rickshaw Theatre in Vancouver and are ready to rip the dance floor apart with their brand of technical death metal.   Vancouver has had a heavy month of May and possibly suffering from wallet fatigue from attending so many shows lately which sort of shows by tonight’s attendance.   But still a decent crowd to form a mosh pit!  The band has remained pretty stable in the last 10 years with John Longstreth (drums), Mike Flores (bass), Jason Keyser on vocals and the Origin-al Paul Ryan on guitars whom has kept this band going since 1997. 

That’s a good 24-25 years and for death metal that is quite the feat to survive through the throngs of death metal bands that have come and gone.  Their latest album was released just a couple days prior to this show on June 3 2022 called “Chaosmos” (Nuclearblast), and I must say, it’s a pretty devastating album from them with some catchy songs that we will hear this night.

The guys hit the stage with ‘Expulsion of Fury’, as this starts off as ballistic song with hyper blast beats and crazy guitar then settles down into a groove with some nice nugga nugga guitar.   Jason uses a wired mic and is swinging that wire around pretty good, was wondering if it would catch my camera.   His style on stage reminds me a lot of Barney Greenway (Napalm Death) who paces back and forth like a caged lion on crack.   Song 2 slows down, abit, with ‘Purgatory’ then we get the absolutely nutso ‘Thrall:Fulcrum:Apex’ which we see Paul Ryans guitar strumming hand move so fast it’s a blur, then mid way slows down to chuggy palm mutes to engulf your brain and back to mach1 all within just over a minute in length.  Now that is a song that was built for moshing!

Typical stage setup we see tonight,I notice Paul Ryan using Oversized Mesa Cabs and a Mesa rack of some kind along with his Jackson Kelly guitar.

Song 5 with ‘Ecophagy’ and 6 ‘Chaosmos’ they play just a couple off the new album.  I really dig ‘Chaosmos’, its such a hooky riff that Paul came up with. as the song seems to have just about all we are used to hearing in a Origin song with some hangbanging chugs and piston pulverizing drumming from Longstreth.  Just love the drum arrangement on ‘Disease Called Man’ which was next at song 7.  How Longstreth keeps that pace all night is extraordinary, or any of these guys night after night.

Song 9 with ‘Saliga’ as well as ‘Banishing Illusion’ (from “Entity”) with see a lot more higher pitched witchy vocals from Paul Ryan which were on the mark with the song.   Mike Flores contributes vocals here and there as well.

The majority of the 15 songs we witnessed were from the Entity (4) and Omnipresent (3) albums, as they blasted through a high energy set that wasted a sweaty audience at the end with ‘Unattainable Zero’   You need to give the new one ‘Chaosmos’ a listen and the rest of the discography for one of the most brutal bands on the planet.  Live is just as devastating.