For the second year running, one of our images from the previous year’s concert shooting in and around Sydney for the AU Review has been included in their annual Australia’s Year in Music book. Last year we had a few images appear, but this year just one made it, with a shot of Suicide Silence on stage at the Bald Faced Stag Hotel in Leichardt, NSW on September 10, 2011.

I remember the gig vividly: they were originally meant to be playing the Roundhouse, but the gig got moved at the last minute to this tiny sweat box on Parramatta Rd. The night outside was freezing, but step a few feet inside the front door and you were dripping with perspiration. The show was all-ages and the room was full to the brim with angsty teens and twenty-somethings. I arrived just as the support band was finishing up – hormone-drunk dudes flailing their arms around wildly and moving around in some retarded attempt to form a circle pit, but probably just hoping to hit someone.

Suicide Silence had been here the previous year for the No Sleep Til’ Festival and they put on an excellent show there. It was no different here at the Bald Faced Stag, where as headliners, they owned the show and punished the rabid audience with a set comprising songs from their catalogue at deafening sonic – and subsonic – levels. I think singer Mitch Lucker enjoyed being so close to the crowd: with no mosh barrier, but a high stage level, he could get up close and personal without too much fear of jumpers.

Anyway, CLICK HERE to go check out a digital version of Australia’s Year in Music: 2011.

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