Lee’s Palace turned into a concrete crypt last night—three bands, one altar, and zero mercy as Dead Congregation, Sedimentum, and Last Retch tore Toronto limb from limb.
Last Retch
Steel City heavy weights wasted zero time opening Shit up last night. As usual, riffs landed like body blows; drum fills were short, mean, and punctual and vocalist Finlay’s vocals/ feral charisma, locked in the crowd.
If you have ever been to a Last Retch show then you know, Finlay commands the stage. The interactions with bandmates, snarling toward the crowd, and throwing every riff back at us through expression alone.
Standout moments: a mid-set, mid-tempo grinder that let the bass chew through the PA; a closing sprint that felt like the floor dropped a fucking foot.
SETLIST
Oozing Pustules
Dissolved in Lye (Down to Rot)
Neurosis
Resinous Drip of Decay
Abject Cruelty
Dissecting the Leper
In The Polder They Reek
Sedimentum
The room started to fill when Quebec Legends Sedimentum took the stage. They were utterly tectonic and malignant, dissonant chord stacks, lurching meters, and those sudden sinkholes where everything collapses into sub-bass and feedback before roaring back twice as cruel. The guitars had that tar-slick sheen; the drummer played like he was welding the set shut from the fucking inside.
Transitions were their secret weapon, false endings, held breaths, then a sideways riff that sent the crowd back over the rail. It felt less like “songs” and more like one long, contaminated current.🔥 Eerie harmonics cut through the fog a couple times, and both moments drew an audible hush before the hammer fell again.
Standout moments: a long, doom-soaked build into blast-turbulence that turned the front third of the room into a single organism.
SETLIST
Le Labyrinthe Sempiternel
Suppuration Morphogénésiaque
Krypto Chronique II
Chronophobie
Inhumation céleste
Dead Congregation
Greek Death Metal Iconics Dead Congregation didn’t so much start a set as , they basically started a total engulfment. Their reputation for density makes immediate sense: riffs don’t just move forward; they bloom outward, each note dragging a wake of harmonics behind it. Drums were surgical ride patterns like chain, kicks like guillotines. Vocals were cavernous yet articulate, the rare growl that reads as intent instead of texture.
Their set launched crushing mid-tempo passages opened into bleak, near-clean interludes, then snapped back with that signature Greek-school ferocity. The room shifted from head-down convulsions to eyes-up reverence. When they throttled back in the final third for a ritualistic, tolling figure before detonating into the closer, it felt less like a “big ending” and more like the ground finishing its collapse.
SETLIST
Martyrdoom
Morbid Paroxysm
Quintessence Maligned
Vanishing Faith
Wind's Bane
Graves of the Archangels
Lucid Curse
Only Ashes Remain
Promulgation of the Fall
Serpentskin
Teeth into Red
Verdict
Three bands, no survivors. Last Retch brought the fist; Sedimentum brought the vertigo; Dead Congregation brought the abyss. Lee’s sounded mean, the lights looked abysmal, and Toronto’s death-metal faithful showed up ready to be buried.
