Chicago’s metal scene has a well-deserved reputation as one of the country’s most eclectic and prolific. As 2024 comes to a close, local fans can celebrate their good fortune with a stacked double album-release show headlined by two of the area’s grimiest death-metal purveyors. Joliet four-piece Molder released Engrossed in Decay in 2022 and have spent much of the year and a half since on the road. That experience has tightened their ensemble playing, and you can hear it all over their new third full-length, Catastrophic Reconfiguration (the first they’ve written with new guitarist Carlos Santini). It’s classic death metal, groovy and filthy, with pulverizing riffs, scathing guitar solos, hard-driving drums, and lyrics that confront the realities and anxieties of the modern world. Even the vocals will remind you of first-wave veterans like Autopsy and Obituary.
Primal Code are a relatively new trio of local musicians who’ve already amassed a tall stack of heavy releases in other bands. Vocalist and guitarist Gene Marino also plays guitar with hardcore mainstays the Killer, drummer James Farn fronts Home Invasion, and bassist Will Lindsay has an extensive résumé that includes an ongoing role in long-running Chicago noise act Bloodyminded as well as stints in Anatomy of Habit, Indian, Middian, and Wolves in the Throne Room. Their first full-length, Opaque Fixation (also their debut on Relapse), takes aim at humankind’s inhumanity with a concise punch of brutality, underlining the bitter irony that our species wound up on top of the food chain. Also on the bill are Indianapolis four-piece Obscene (who released the impressive Agony & Wounds this summer), Ontario’s Warp Chamber, and promising local newcomers Morbidity.
Molder, Primal Code Molder headline; Primal Code, Obscene, Warp Chamber, and Morbidity open. Thu 12/12 7:30 PM, Reggies Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $20, 17+