The Palladium in Worcester, Mass. was made greater by the sound of primal and unfiltered fury as metal acts Animosity, Horse the Band and Between the Buried and Me performed Friday, Nov. 2. Because a concert featuring alternative rock bands Trapt and Fuel occurred on the same night at the venue's main stage, the bands played in a small upstairs venue at the Palladium to a sold-out crowd. The variety and intense dissonance of the bands' music left the crowd pulverized but also revitalized and incredibly entertained.Despite facing some sound troubles, Animosity delivered a solid set that got the crowd moving. Fan favorites such as "The Black Page" led to intense mosh pits. The band's ferocious and pleasing breakdowns spurred the crowd into a frenzy.

Once Horse the Band came on, however, the evening changed from a simple concert into a journey through the subconscious and latent memories of childhood. As keyboardist Erik Engstrom played his Nintendo-influenced riffs, memories of Super Mario Brothers and The Legend of Zelda filled the air. Like preteens reacting to the irritating but galvanizing music that plays when you run out of time in a Sonic the Hedgehog stage, the crowd responded to Horse's styling with an almost desperate wave of crowd surfing and stage diving.

At one point, members of the band were hit by the feet of a stage diver. A humorous moment followed when lead singer Nathan Winneke proceeded to show the crowd the dos and don'ts of stage diving. Winneke has mastered the art of rapport, and, at varying moments, joked, jostled and bossed around the crowd with authority.

The band started strong but ended on an even higher note with its ferocious penultimate song "Kangarooster Meadows," whose shocking vocals struck me with their anger. Fans lifted their arms and made scissoring motions as the band began the final song and fan favorite "Cutsman." The intense introduction to the song made me feel like Megaman charging my blaster to prepare to take on my most vicious foe. The mosh pit felt like a battlefield as lifelong enemies collided. "We don't believe in songs, we believe in good times," Winneke said at one point during the set. The band, however, was able to deliver both in abundance.

As Between the Buried and Me began to set up, I wondered how they would ever be able to top the intense spectacle of Horse the Band. My fears were soon allayed as the band launched into a virtuosic and magnificent performance.

They played their newest album, Colors, in its magical entirety. Like a single beam of white light projected into color fragments, BTBAM understand what lies behind disparate musical genres and play to the root of their commonality. They blended intense amber guttural death-core mixed with lavender-infused theatrical keyboard parts masterfully. At times, the beautiful and soft falsetto singing of lead singer and keyboardist Tommy Rogers lulled the crowd into a sense of solace and security, and seconds later bludgeoned the crowd with sharp and vicious screams.

Polka, jazz and even country all found their way into the epic journey across the visible light spectrum. The crowd responded to the various sonic changes appropriately and at times came to resemble a country hoedown or a dance club. The new album stands at over an hour in length, but BTBAM played the whole thing straight through with only a few stops between songs. As one song fused into another through a series of covert transitions, fans were left dazzled at the near continuous mosaic of beauty that the band had presented.

Although I've listened to the new album several times, hearing it performed live was a Herculean odyssey of sound. BTBAM continued to please as they played fan favorite "Selkies," the endless obsession from their Alaska album, as an encore. The crowd, already breathless by the dazzling performance, somehow managed to muster up enough energy to sing along to every note.