Chaos in Tejas Live (First Night): Benediction

Benediction guitarist Peter Rewinsky inside at Red 7, 5.30.13 (by Shelley Hiam)

Austin’s annual run of spring music festivals works me into a zombie. Chaos in Tejas’ first-night spectrum, from the hiccup pop of locals Deep Time to Kiwi parallels the Bats – with the Wire-y Parquet Courts and punk pioneers the Damned in-between – surely roused me. Yet only the death metal barrage of Benediction truly brought me back to life.

On tour with tonight’s CiT headliners, fellow legacy death mongers Bolt Thrower, the Birmingham, UK, quintet double-teamed that same tour twofer in 1994, but never made it to the Lone Star State. For its first Texas run, late Thursday night inside Red 7, Benediction appeared as pleased as zombie killers.

“Lovely place you’ve got here,” grinned front bloke Dave Hunt. “Appreciate what you’ve got.”

With its never-rutting onslaught of multi-speed metal, Benediction’s hour-long battering ram bequeathed only admiration from the packed front room of gleefully pit-stomping heshers and a smiling back row of approving onlookers.

Powered still by founding guitarists Darren Brookes and Peter Rewinsky, a twin-engine blast of double-clutched gear jamming, and with the 20-year-old rhythmic freight train of bassist Frank Healy and drummer Neil Hutton, the fivepiece made mince meat out of its genre’s all-too-generic plow with brute force, endless enthusiasm, and blessed variation.

“Old school” remained Hunt’s bonhomie mantra throughout the thrilling performance, and new millennial bow Organised Chaos fit right into this particular music festival’s extreme proceedings. From “newer” speed demons like “They Must Die Screaming” to debut LP touchstones including “Subconscious Terror,” Benediction proved a marvel of economy and elan, never autopilot, always freshly dead.

I live again.