Suicide Silence - Ending is the Beginning: The Mitch Lucker Memorial Show (2014)
A benefit concert for daughter of the late Mitch Lucker. Really quite admirable on everyone's part, to pay tribute to their fallen friend in such an epic and fitting way, and to be able to financially help his daughter go to college. This concert succeeds because every song on here has a different vocalist from another band to help out, and since they only have to do one song, everyone goes all-out to really put on a hell of a show, and to be honest, I can't tell most of these dudes apart. I sincerely can't. A lot of them sound just alike, but there are some really notable guests on here that really help particular tracks stand out. "Unanswered" has Whitechapel's Phil Bozeman on vocals, and he absolutely fucking KILLS it!! There's a part over the breakdown that his gutturals just sound so fucking NASTY over and shit, I REALLY need to get around to reviewing Whitechapel's shit now that I think about it. Followed by that is "Girl of Glass" with great vocals from ex-Bury Your Dead frontman Myke Terry, and at one point, he screams "ALL MY MOTHAFUCKIN' NIGGAS, LEMME SEE YOU BOUNCE!!" to an entire crowd full of white people, so that made me have flashbacks to when Of Mice & Men did that "Hard in the Paint" thing for live performances of "OG Loko", and guess what? I didn't need to remember a bunch of white teenagers screaming the N-word confidently. Ah well. Also particularly hilarious is As I Lay Dying's Tim Lambesis doing "Wake Up" because I bet that's not what he wanted his wife to do!! Aaah that was fucking awful.
To be honest with you, I can't tell the difference between a lot of the vocalists on here, but a few more moments that really stick out are when they bring out Of Mice & Men's Austin Carlile to do "O.C.D." because his vocal style is pretty unique and he almost even looks like Mitch Lucker himself! Three particularly heart-wrenching moments come towards the end, as Machine Head's Robb Flynn acoustically covers Black Sabbath's "Die Young" in Mitch's honor, and then some time after, the band (as you can see on the DVD) puts up a video of Mitch Lucker behind them as they rip into a cover of the Deftones' "Engine No. 9", but the video has his isolated vocals from performing the song live, so in a way, it's Mitch Lucker's last time ever gracing the stage, for one last final song after all of the years he toured with the band. It's a pretty emotional moment, and then out of fucking nowhere, they bring out Lamb of God's (oh hey, that's ANOTHER band I should start reviewing) Randy Blythe to do "You Only Live Once" and he fucking KILLS it!! However, the best part is when he gets into the audience at one point, orders the band to stop playing, and then keeps on shouting "LIVE!! LIFE!! HARD!!" in Mitch's honor as the crowd screams it back at him, before the song finally kicks back in. It's honestly such a fucking badass and emotional moment, and I'm sure Mitch was looking down on this entire concert, smiling.
Like I said, truth be told, I can't tell the difference between a fair bit of these vocalists, which takes away from my rating, but this is such a badass way to honor a fallen friend and you get a few truly great performances out of it. I couldn't even begin to think of a better way to end a musician's legacy than to have their friends honor them with a final concert in their memory. Past that, it seemed like a fun as shit concert in itself, but I'm just kinda left in the dark by some of their guest vocalists. R.I.P. Mitch Lucker, you beautiful, maniacal man.
7/10 ________________________________________________________
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