Sanguisugabogg / Despised Icon / Defeated Sanity / Bayway / Corpse Pile

FOR FANS OF: PeelingFlesh, Snuffed on Sight, Beneath the Massacre, Rose Funeral, Carnifex, Oceano, Bodybox, 200 Stab Wounds, Dying Fetus, Suffocation, Internal Bleeding, Devourment, Vomit Forth, Tribal Gaze, Kruelty, Gates to Hell, Missing Link, Skinless, Pyrexia, Malignancy, Abominable Putridity, Organectomy, Acranius, No Zodiac, Through the Eyes of the Dead, Animosity

November 25, 2025 at the Roxian Theatre in Pittsburgh, PA

I’ve been a fan of Despised Icon since 2007 when they released The Ills of Modern Man in 2007. The album was fast, heavy, different, had two vocalists for great diversity and layering, and did I mention fast and heavy? It was right up my alley when I was a sophomore in high school. I was always looking for the next heaviest band and this one caught my attention heavily. I may actually put them up there with my top 20 listened to bands of all-time. They’ve been consistent and yet current enough with the times to stay ahead of the curve in terms of writing breakdowns and riffs in B standard. They debuted their newest album, Shadow Work less than a month before this show so I had been listening to it like crazy. It had some cool features and I feel the writing was better and more catchy than their previous 2 albums. Day of Mourning is probably most people’s favorite album of theirs but I’m a die-hard to their 3 albums prior. They had some songs in French, being from Montreal and Quebec, which led to unique vocal sounds I’d never heard before in metal. I saw and met them back in the day at Peabody’s Downunder, a now closed venue in Cleveland known for intimate metal shows. Eating pizza with them next door at Rascal House will forever be in my memories. Their live set had a fantastic spread of all of their music and the setlist is as follows:

A Fractured Hand

Snake in the Grass
Bad Vibes
Furtive Monologue
Over My Dead Body
Retina
The Sunset Will Never Charm Us
The Apparition
In the Arms of Perdition
Death of an Artist
The Aftermath
MVP
Purgatory

The Apparition is my favorite from Despised Icon’s newest album. 10/10 will see them every time they come around.

Sanguisugabogg headlined, which I actually didn’t expect. I figured Despised Icon would headline but then realized during Sanguisugabogg’s set why they headlined. The crowd went nuts for their caveman-like grunts of brutality and simple yet heavy riffs. They enticed the crowd with a game of “Kill the Carrier” by throwing a beat up football into the crowd during the set, saying “whoever makes it alive after this song back to the merch booth with this football gets to pick out a shirt.” This led to pure chaos as soon as the football was thrown into the crowd. It didnt’ stop there. They pulled out a wall of death toward the end of their set, but it was a uniquely shaped venue so it kinda sucked. The GA standing room area was maybe only 15 feet deep, max, which made it so a ton of people couldn’t be down on the ground. I’ve seen wall of death videos way more epic on their instagram. With two guitarists and no bassists, they use pitch shifting and doubling software to add octives of bass lower to ensure you still get a full range wall of noise.

Defeated Sanity and Corpse Pile were fantastic and heavy, yet I was unfamiliar with them before the set so I don’t have too much to say about them other than I’m going to look into more of their music to see how it sounds on the recorded versions of the songs I heard. Good stuff and super heavy, I can definitely understand why they opened for this lineup.

Now let me talk about Byway for a second. Jay Bayway stole the stage the moment he came out. He was doing crowd work and doing lots of call-and-response like “ BAYWAY” “MOTHERFUCKER” and had us chant “NEW JERSEYY” as he rapped over it. The band leans more toward Hardcore which I never mind, the genre always brings the best and most lively crowd. Jay got real at moments talking about family and sobriety and then called about 200 people bitches, which was hilarious and satire of course. He was able to get the crowd going to say the least. If you get a chance to see Bayway anytime they come around, you won’t regret checking them out. Absolutely fun and of course, heavy.

Images shot by Shane McNicholas @elsephoto with a Canon R5 with an RF 85mm 1.2 DS and an R6ii with an RF 14-35 F4