Metal fans of all kinds lined up on March 20th to get into the Theatre, a premium stage venue nestled inside the Great Canadian Casino Resort in Etobicoke about 25 minutes west of downtown Toronto. Greeted by a merch table about five cashiers wide right after getting past security, it shouldn’t be a surprise to people that hoodies and t-shirts were able to coat an entire wall with four bands to look forward to and sharing the space. Lamb Of God (now free from the clutches of the Papyrus font) announced this ongoing Into Oblivion tour back in January that shares the name with their latest release back in late March and technically has been teased since last October. With that said, it’s safe to say the tour’s been a long time coming especially for anticipating fans and with the dates stretching all the way to mid-May, the band can look ahead to being busy with a big tour along with a new album release. And of course, they have to invite some of metal’s most lethal to join the party too.
Ohio’s own Sanguisugabogg got things rolling with a set that felt like pure chaos in the best way, leaning hard into their sludgy, down-tuned death metal sound. Their riffs hit like blunt force, and the crowd responded almost instantly with pits opening up early in the night. The set packed a lot of punch and was as brutal as the gory decor that furnished the space around the quartet from Columbus. Overall, the band focused on impact and they delivered that with no hesitation and just setting a heavy foundation right out of the gate.
Fit For An Autopsy followed by tightening things up without losing any of the momentum, bringing a more polished and atmospheric take on modern deathcore. Their set balanced crushing breakdowns with more expansive, melodic sections, giving the room a bit more dynamic range while still keeping the intensity high. There’s a precision to their live show that stands out, and it translated well in a setting like this high-ceiling theatre where clarity and control can make a noticeable difference. This 6-piece from New Jersey knows that bringing the energy as a band is one thing, but showing your band is a well-oiled machine is another level.
Kublai Khan proudly hailing from Sherman, Texas stepped in next and arguably pushed the energy to its peak before the headliner delivering a set that felt relentless from beginning to end. Their brand of hardcore is all about groove and aggression and it landed hard with the Toronto crowd with every breakdown lighting the fuse for the floor to explode (see Antpile 2 and its “32 squeals, no singing” as per frontman Matt Honeycutt). This unapologetic delivery worked in their favour knowing what audience wanted, making their set feel super immediate and inevitably physical especially in the pit. By the time they wrapped, the room was more than primed for the closer to take it the rest of the way.
Lamb of God wasted no time setting the stage on fire opening with Ruin before snapping straight into Laid to Rest, a two-hit combo that immediately locked the room into their early 2000s peak. Pulling from 2003’s As the Palaces Burn and 2004’s Ashes of the Wake 2004, this opening stretch pulled out some of LOG’s big guns with these records that have helped greatly with building their reputation and it’s obvious with the amount of moshing happening this early in the set. Laid to Rest in particular hit like one of the night’s first major release points with no surprise as a song that still carries undeniable weight more than two decades later. From there, Blood Junkie kept things rooted in that same era before the band began weaving in newer material like this year’s Into Oblivion and Resurrection Man from their self-titled album showing how their sound has evolved without losing that core aggression people can’t get enough of. Vocalist Randy Blythe is still runs an absolute masterclass on stage too and continues to show everyone how it’s done while making it look easy.
The middle of the set balanced eras in a way that kept the pacing engaging. Grace and Desolation (complete with a drum-led intro by the monster Art Cruz) added a more technical, groove-heavy dimension and gave the band room to stretch out instrumentally while still keeping the circle pit spinning. Fan favourite tracks like 512 and Walk With Me in Hell brought things back to familiar territory with the latter standing out as another one of the night’s big crowd moments. With Randy motivating Toronto to “get ready to walk with me” before the song, that towering chorus just cut through the space easily to no surprise. The energy was more than palpable at that point. Newer cuts like Parasocial Christ fit surprisingly seamlessly alongside these classics to reinforce how consistent this project from Virginia has been across decades. By the time Omerta and 11th Hour rolled in, the set leaned back into these deeper cuts and longtime fan favourites to reward those diehard day ones once again with Omerta that saw its tour debut in this casino resort.
With no encore, the closing stretch felt deliberate and heavy in all the right ways. Memento Mori and Sepsis brought a darker, more atmospheric weight especially with the former track being dedicated to the late great John Dunsworth who played Mr. Lahey, a beloved character in the Canadian classic TV show Trailer Park Boys. It shows how much the band understood about its audience with a very specific way to show love like that. Another dedication followed from there, but this time for “the anthropologists in the building” with the inevitable closer Redneck blowing the roof off the Great Canadian giving moshers and crowdsurfers more than their money’s worth. It’s just that kind of song that doesn’t need to be hyped up anymore because the moment the opening riff hits, the entire room reacts like a pack of wolves to a rallying howl. If we wanted to talk structurally, the setlist just moved fluidly between Lamb Of God’s eras with highlights on their unforgettable 2003–2006 run while still making space for newer material from their recent records and then stretching to their latest work. Their melodic riffs and brutal breakdowns remain timeless. Laying it down for the Ontario crowd, it never felt like a nostalgia-driven set or a promotion cycle. This is just a band confidently pulling from every chapter of their catalogue, giving the fans what they came to see, and letting the songs speak for themselves as they always have and will continue to do.