I have only attended San Francisco’s Regent Theater once— for the ‘Evening with Machine Head’ tour, and they happened to be filming a concert DVD. Thankfully, the air conditioning was working this time for The Summer Slaughter Tour. As Summer Slaughter’s brand is aligned mainly with death and extreme metal, the ninth annual installment of the tour is a bit like a metal sandwich with openers Beyond Creation and Cattle Decapitation being the closest representatives of traditional death metal. The meat of the tour leans heavily on Djent-y Sumerian flavored metalcore with Acacia Strain leaning a bit more on the hardcore side of things, and Veil of Maya and Born of Osiris being more apropos of my former description. On the top of the bill, Arch Enemy is a bit of the odd man out as the only Gothenburg style, melodic death metal band.
It should be said that Obscura dropped off due to problems securing their work visas, and After The Burial decided not to do the tour because of the tragic death of their guitarist, Justin Lowe. This was not the entire line-up as the organizers intended.