By Mark Derricutt

Artist: Cripple Mr Onion

Date / Venue: Saturday July 30th, 2016 - Kings Arms, Auckland

Looking back over the many years of the New Zealand music scene, there's always been one band that keeps coming up recommendations when people learn of my rather eclectic tastes; and that's Cripple Mr Onion, however for one reason or another I'd never been able to catch them when ever they played, and then they fell silent.

That was until they resurfaced to announce "The Reemergence", a set of 4-5 tour dates before laying the band to rest permanently — finally I would be able to witness what song ( and now, myself ) as one of the best progressive metal bands from our local shores.

I was not disappointed.

The evening started as a horridly wet and stormy night, but that didn't stop anyone from turning out to the Kings Arms to witness Auckland's Helgorithms and Whanganui's Pull Down The Sun - two equally awesome bands with progressive, discordant bents.

So… The Onion - did they live up years or expectation? The tl;dr; is a whole hearted resounding "hell yes" - I'm more familiar with the band members more recent projects ( Dhawk, His Masters Voice ) so the calibre of musicianship was never in doubt, the style and songs however were all unknown to me - and it was a pure delight to watch vocalist Andy Woodd effortlessly switch between dual mics for vocoder/effects and growls/clean singing.

There's so many good things I could say about the show, the songs, the music, the… the…. but I think I'll just let the images speak for themselves….