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Psycho Vegas Day 2: Death metallers, hard rock sexagenarians take over

Some takeaways from Day Two of Psycho Vegas 2017 at the Hard Rock Hotel. The heavy music fest continues through Sunday.

Death comes ripping

It’s like Aristotle — or maybe Socrates, or was it Alf? — famously once said: “There’s no cowbell in death metal, broseph.” Oh, but Carcass begs to differ, smart guys.

On Saturday, the British goregrind forebears became the first band death metal band to ever play the Psycho main stage. They fit in as snugly as corpse in casket, aforementioned percussive accessory and all.

Yeah, that was a little cowbell on “Keep On Rotting in the Free World,” a song taken from the band’s most polarizing album, 1996’s “Swansong.” That record cheesed off some purists because it revealed Carcass to be exactly what they were: the closet thing death metal has ever had to a classic rock band, with ’70s-steeped riffs and New Wave of British Heavy Metal dual-guitar harmonies.

And that’s exactly why they were a great match for Psycho, because more than any of their band of their ilk, they’re all about the groove. This they demonstrated again and again Saturday at The Joint, whether it be guttural old school couplet “Exhume to Consume” and “Reek of Putrefaction” or the double-bass-drum-powered churn of “Corporeal Jigsore Quandary,” easily among the best songs of the day about slicing and dicing someone into a human jigsaw puzzle.

Hail to the King

Look, we know this is a highly contentious issue in these divided times, but we’re just going to go ahead and take a stand here, consequences be damned: When it comes to playing air guitar on cross-shaped microphone stands made of human bones, King Diamond is right up there with the very best of them.

There we said it.

And there Diamond was, shredding along with guitarists Andy LaRoque and Mike Wead in a performance that rivaled Alice Cooper’s last year as Psycho’s most theatrical set yet.

First, Diamond engaged in a bit of elder abuse upon rolling grandma out in her wheelchair during a show-opening “Welcome Home” — hey, you might be fed up with granny as well if she was fresh out of the asylum and always chatting with the dead over tea, as the narrative goes in Diamond’s “Them,” the album from which said song is culled.

Diamond and company then worked their way to a front-to-back performance of 1987’s “Abigail,” their first concept album.

It’s a gothic tale told over a classic metal soundtrack, brought to life by Diamond’s ringing falsetto, a ghost story voiced by a man who sounds like he just saw one.

On growing older without growing up (thankfully)…

One of the coolest things about Psycho Vegas is that there’s little separation between artist and audience — you’ll see plenty of musicians hanging in the crowd with the rest of the Psycho legions, all of them fans one and the same. In the case of Ace Frehley and his guitarist, Richie Scarlet, though, this took on an added dimension: They looked as if they had been partying just as hard as everyone else by the time they hit The Joint stage like a couple of tipsy squirrels upon downing one too many crab apples.

Yes, at one point, Scarlet hocked a loogie that landed squarely on his chest, but he and the “Spaceman” still delivered a litany of Frehley solo favs and Kiss staples with guitar shaking gusto — c’mon who ever gets tired of watching Frehley’s humbucker belch clouds of smoke like Godzilla after a bong rip?

“Take me to Vegas,” Frehley sang during “Toys.” “I wanna have fun.”

He was taken to Vegas.

He definitely had fun.

Frehley wasn’t alone among hard rock elder statesmen getting their due on Saturday.

Earlier in the day at The Joint, British metallers Diamond Head traced the roots of thrash back to when the sound was a mere seedling. Though only guitarist Brian Tatler remains from the group’s original line-up, and the band’s 33-year-old Danish singer Rasmus Bom Andersen is half his age, Diamond Head demonstrated why they were such a key influence on bands like Metallica and Megadeth: propulsive double bass drumming, knotty riffing, sonorous vocals with a serrated edge.

As they played, a number of older dudes in the house rocked out to what was most likely the music of their teens, transported back in time via heavy metal. And beer.

Five Saturday highlights:

5. Inter Arma’s vertebrae-twisting musical head fake, going from the intro of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” right into their lurching doom death without a pause at the Hard Rock Pool.

4. Diamond Head drummer and Las Vegan Karl Wilcox getting some hometown love.

3. Neurosis bludgeoning Vegas for the first time in 18 years.

2. Gojira delivering the evening’s most triumphant fist-in-the-air moment via “Stranded.”

1. Carcass crushing all with a set-ending “Heartwork.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.

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