Cryptopsy & Cattle Decapitation – Underworld, London – Saturday 4th May 2013
And they sit resigned to tonight’s theme, breathing in an imposed fate, sowing dismal grand narratives, sizzled by the glow of an all-seeing wasteland. Down by the stage, dark and dusty, tethered by will to the bowge cradling them, the fans look blankly ahead. The stage is bare. The sounds are of chitchat, not [...]
Helloween – HMV Forum, London – Tuesday 16th April 2013
Darkening lights and explosions. Ever darkening, more and more, the background shining illumined. Citizens pressing to the bar as notes of music flare up. A tingle of anticipation and the beginning has passed. Musicians roam stage-bound, instruments breaking silences imposed from the past. Faces declare familiarity and contentedness. This is the gig. Hello London! We [...]
Sahg – Underworld Camden March 2013
The soul of Metal is at threat. Atheists stand your ground. We are not talking about an actual soul. Rather the fight for the intangible but evident. This fight involves the focused and truly believing against those that wish their names associated with anything. Literally anything. Or those that seek the comfort of fame within [...]
Deicide – Underworld, London – Wednesday 20th March 2013
Dear Metal, Oh holy abstraction, we offer upon you our praise, our deepest longings transmuted into worship. We kneel at the altar, salivating noisily, awaiting your dictation through sounds and fury. Days stop and we stand still in the tuneful glow of your acolytes. Our interpretation knows no bounds. Sex novels are paeans to musical [...]
Job for a Cowboy – Underworld, London – Wednesday 6th March 2013
It’s an enduring, albeit sarcastic fact that London’s Metal community is always on time. Everything else gets eschewed in the name of Metal. Time needn’t exclude the obsessed from their fix, and early hours are just another sacrifice in a long line of notable achievements in the expression of loyalty, another rubber stamp of five [...]
Vader – Underworld, London – Friday 8th February 2013
Personal space knows no realisation in the pokey Underworld. Its cramped confines are a pit of inertia when sold out. Thus follows the usual indelicacies: somebody’s foreskin is snagged on a passing keychain, while one man’s shart is another’s ruination. The stairs swell with human presence, a silent Ganges flows off sight. The back bar [...]
Aeon – Relentless Garage, London gig review – Wednesday 16th January 2012
No metaphors of ascension. No grand transcendence to a better plane. Just a room sitting above Holloway Road. This is the Relentless Garage’s bastard sibling, the upstairs penetralium that picks up low profile acts and new starters, industry dregs and violated oldsters. Up crusty stairs, through grey double doors, this is a crawl space masquerading [...]
Christmas, Bloody Christmas gig review – Lorient, Linkoping, December 2012
So begins another review; the final review of 2012. Not content with the terrible weather of England, we set sail (well, flew to be more precise) for the Viking shores of Sweden to witness the efforts of unheralded warriors of Metal. Lorient in Linkoping is predominantly a restaurant that at night, sloughs off the dashing [...]
Iced Earth – Underworld, London – Thursday 20th December 2012
They brought their own lines of dialogue. Twenty minutes of rambunctious chitchat and a myriad of painful decisions. How to approach the task at hand? What routes of wordsmithery might yield something? Comparative analysis? Grandiloquent reverence? Modest description? Annual update? Or the complete collapse of the critical faculties, every organ of thought thrown into disarray [...]
Macabre & Obituary – Relentless Garage, London – Wednesday 5th December 2012
“What about a man cuts off his penis and cooks it for dinner?” “Happened.” “What about a chess genius murders people and records the acts on a chessboard?” “Happened.” “What about a man keeps his victims’ corpses in order to create a zombie army? Surely that’s make-believe?” “No. It happened.” “What about a human stew? [...]
Luca Turilli’s Rhapsody – O2 Islington, London – Monday 12th November 2012
‘We tunnelled beneath the village, escaping the clutches of the Gangorions, stealing through the night to the river, to salvation, to reach famous new glories, fabled places where kings would regain the throne and power would be reclaimed.’ These were the notes in the toilets, scrawled up the walls. It was as if someone was [...]
Kamelot – HMV Forum, London – Wednesday 7th November 2012
Take from me the gothic cape and wrench me free from the keyboard melody. Lift the damnable air of melancholy and release the ravens already. Let that man through, he’ll lighten the mood. Peel back the sticky paste of angst and pitch leather and steel chains dropping noisily, clanging, beneath the sternum. Their cries, their [...]
Evile & Wolf – Relentless Garage, London – Sunday 28th October 2012
“It was good.” “It was bad.” “I agree.” “I disagree.” So the sayings ignite. Words in the aftermath, flowing like rivers. These are the terms of the dialogue, paths of discourse so well-worn we slide across them easily. We slip slaloming on skis of cliché. With insight miles out of range, we heed no [...]
Malevolent Creation – Underworld, London – 10th April 2011
There’s comfort in the familiar. Whether it’s a piece of music or a pair of socks, the formerly-touched and caressed has a certainty missing from everything foreign and mysterious. The ominous den assumes a new colour once it’s been entered, just as a repeated venture is approached differently after the first instance. There’s safety in [...]
Ihsahn – Electric Ballroom, London – Thursday 19th August 2010
Lateness spells defeat. But too quick an approach hastens the end. These are words that echo asCamden High Streetrushes past, one long smear of smoke and concrete. Two metal warriors, ironclad racers, hurtle over pavement, knocking over bins and tin cans, maintaining a balance that may escape them at any time. One, a moustache wearing [...]
Helloween – HMV Forum, Kentish Town – Sunday 5th December 2010
By the time we approach the venue, moving quickly to the repel the cold, we’ve heard tonight’s signature sound a dozen times. These animalistic mating cries unite the sole walkers into single bodies that coil through the grimNorth Londonmurk. Any intruders are warded off by levels of pitch that cannot be read or consumed. [...]
Hanover Choir – St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road – Saturday 11th December 2010
It was with open minds, overactive curiosity glands and a lust for mince pies that we stepped into the church. The pews had already filled up and soft choral music radiated from the front. The arches hung in the air, touched by a breeze sent in fromGloucester Road. This was a strange setting, a non-place, [...]
Enslaved – Underworld, London – 22nd April 2011
There’s something extremely nice about listening to Black Metal on a summery spring day. It rubs antagonistically up against all the displays that accompany the weather: sun hats, laughter, shorts, frolics. The bland predictability of the British sunshine, with its routine trips to the park and ice cream-fed fat children, has a sickening lack of [...]
De Profundis & co – Unicorn, Camden, London – Saturday 15th January 2011
We are led to believe that price is a means for signalling worth, that monetary value reflects some intrinsic, indelible, transcendental property. The ideology of the market underscores the fallacy: expensiveness equates to quality. The exchange of cash is our access to worthwhile objects and experiences. Capitalism’s sly touch renders this process very subtle: there [...]
Dark Tranquillity – Underworld, London – Tuesday 28th September 2010
Even though it’s a Tuesday night, and some of us presumably have work tomorrow, the Underworld is completely full. Both over near the stage and at the bar there are masses congregating. Every darkened space reveals a picture of overpopulation: young twink metallers sipping hops from jars, jolly leathern titans cavorting with lithe jezebels, [...]
Hardcore Superstar – Electric Ballroom, London – Friday 1st April 2011
Ursula Le Guin wrote The Left Hand of Darkness as a way to explore the trappings of gender in our society. In the novel there’s a distant planet populated by a human species all but identical to us except for one fact: they are without gender. They work, travel, socialise, live normal lives, all without [...]
Chthonic & Evile – Underworld, London – Friday 18th March 2011
Back at the Underworld once again. Rarely does a month go by without a visit to the oasis at the heart of Camden. Metal hotspots may mark other vistas of the city, other regions hosting the play of Metal, but they are generally few. To many, the Underworld is the stand-out provider of Metal in [...]
Blood Red Throne – Purple Turtle, London – Monday 2nd May 2011
At Mornington Crescent, a short walk from Camden Town, there are two venues. One is a palatial Grade II listed building with a long history as part of the British cultural fabric. It boasts Doric pillars in its blanched stone exterior and a dome high above its summit. The interiors are ornate and regal, a [...]
Kamelot – O2 Islington, London – 28th April 2011
It would start off like any other Saturday morning cartoon serial. A voice-over speaks to us as the camera floats down from the sky, entering a bedroom window. “Wilber was a normal schoolboy until one day a freak accident melded his mind and body to the music he loved – and he became…Power Metal Man.” [...]
Firewind – Relentless Garage, London – Friday 7th January 2011
Familiar sounds surged upon the senses when we entered the Relentless Garage. Any of the comfort usually afforded by the familiar appeared to be denied from the off. Here our wish to preserve the present, to seek a hardy musical bliss from the eminent Greek headliners, burst almost immediately. We trudged off the gum-specked boulevard-run [...]
Marty Friedman – Underworld, London – 6th May 2011
The bar was empty. The foyer, if you can call it that, was empty. The merch tables were also empty, like deserts bearing expensive t-shirts and oases of factory-reek CDs and posters. Where were the folks? Usually this area is swarming with loiterers and urchins before the bands arrive. Had everyone opted to see Katatonia [...]
Blind Guardian – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London – Sunday 26th September 2010
It takes only ten seconds to wipe Steelwing from the collective memory, to effortlessly scrub them off the minds of all present at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. We knew a support band would wither and die tonight considering the epic force succeeding them. They were predestined to exist as mere memories, the sort kicked and [...]
Atheist – O2 Islington, London – 23rd April 2011
Atheist are a Death Metal band from Florida. They formed in the 1980s. They have released four studio albums and one live album. Last year they released a new album, Jupiter; now they are touring it. So begins the clichéd review. It continues: they played London, they played these songs, they were good, blah blah [...]
Arch Enemy – HMV Forum, Kentish Town – Saturday 27th November 2010
Shit hit the fan. It was a throwback to a bygone era, the travails of old come back to haunt us. Or perhaps more: perhaps a demonstration of societal frailties that go unconsidered. The romancers saw it as nostalgic; the hapless victims saw it as irritating. April 2010 began as expected, a solid chunk [...]
Annihilator – O2 Islington – Saturday 20th November 2010
We stood in the thoroughfare looking anxiously upward at the revellers spilling out of the Wetherspoon’s upstairs. They cast us accusative stares, to which we returned smirks of indifference. The usual Saturday night urchins strolled past. Over to one side the HMV flashed offers of discounted consoles and ultra-special Special Editions, tired old cinema fare, [...]
Sigh – Underworld, London – Tuesday 10th August 2010
Through hazy, rain-splashed windows, passionate remarks fly between a doppelganger and his original. On the inside, perched atop a table, empty bottles shaking precariously, the first shouts manically at the opposite, gesturing wildly to confirm his ire, a fist shuttling words into the glass. On the outside, wrapped in yards of leather lest the clouds [...]
Ancient Ascendant – Scream Lounge, London – Thursday 10th February 2010
After an arduous train journey and a lengthy trek through the depressing streets of Croydon, we finally came to the Scream Lounge. By this point our patience had worn thin, battered by train delays and bastard maps full of lies. We yearned only for liquid toxins with which to banish the suffering and a smidgen [...]
Korpiklaani gig review– Relentless Garage – Thursday 28th October 2010
They ensnared us and walled up the exits. They hindered our egress and watered our eyes. An hour ago we were ripped from the tarmac ofHolloway Roadand imprisoned within the confines of the Garage. Now Korpiklaani lumber onto the stage, bringing to an end a painful wait, the cheers eliminating any grumbles that once chose [...]
Alestorm & Sabaton – Electric Ballroom – Thursday 14th October 2010
Gearing up for the narcissist’s convention across the road, he wraps the pink headband around his peroxide hair and strides away from the tube station. Two steps over the tarmac and he sees his kin. They stand waving leather-clad arms, their feather boas moving in the wind. He moves towards them. Then a foreign presence [...]
Revocation – Underworld, London – Sunday 23rd September 2012
A: Six minutes? B: Five and a half. A: Okay, go on then. B: I’m aware there’s not much time. A: So go on, silly. B: “It’s like a Dave Mustaine of the Spheres. The great icon kicking around celestial bodies. Creating sound. Bringing to life ideas unheard.” A: It’s a bit much. B: I [...]
Firewind – O2 Islington, London – Saturday 22nd September 2012
A curious blend of rival narratives. Three frantic music journalists stand by the side of the venue, minds melting into one, unbridled enthusiasm ready to explode. Paying customers, herded in the middle, await the band patiently. Gus G’s guitar, lowered from the bus, readies itself for the spotlight. Meanwhile FuckSteve runs upRosebury Avenue, knowing [...]
Vile – Underworld, London – 18th September 2012
Enough travails in the midst of summer. Enough minutes spent in the sway of the festival season. Where were our favourite bands? Where were they on those empty days? They were on another plane, aloft from us scum. They were tethered to the machinations of a Wacken and a Hellfest, sitting astride Bloodstock’s oozing [...]
Kobra and the Lotus – The Borderline, London – August 2012
Humanity is a race of infants. Infants that, over the course of their ever so brief lives, grow in flesh to a form that is radically different from their appearance in the material world, screaming and bloody from a gash they were inevitably forced from. Humanity as an adult is not so far removed from [...]
Elm Street – Unicorn, London – Friday 3rd August 2012
When it comes to the Unicorn, the alternatives are always prominent in the mind. It must be the free entry. When payment is required and formality introduced, seriousness takes over. Now the event blots out everything – the procured ticket blinds the holder to the universe of possibilities. Without the basic transaction, far from the [...]
Hellfest 2012 – A Review
We ripped through our cocoons of mundanity to find ourselves on a train heading out of London. The destination? Clisson,France. The purpose? To spend the weekend camping, drinking and revelling in the finest Metal known to man. Yes, another incarnation of one of the best festivals in Europe was upon us: Hellfest. We ditched our [...]
Death Angel – Underworld, London – Thursday 28th June 2012
Today’s grand narrative is time. It’s been twenty-five years since the release of Death Angel’s first album, The Ultra Violence, and they are here in London to play the album in its entirety. Cue fanfare. Cue nostalgia. Cue the mind games of time. It’s not just beer stains and flies at the urinals. The gunk of the [...]
Megadeth – Electric Ballroom, London – Tuesday 12th June 2012
In his book Anatomy of a Sneer, Wilfred Stephenson dedicates a long chapter to Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine. It’s a chapter of luscious detail in a book suffused with luscious detail, a marvel of painstaking research amid layers of poetic invention, which casts a light on that most misunderstood of facial expressions. Some thought the [...]
3 Inches of Blood live review London – May 2012
Various forms of waiting – practised like a sport and exhibited with pride. With streetworks lessening the space, the queuing bodies stood tight against the walls of the World’s End. A narrow passage between them and the mesh barrier was open for traffic: a preserve of Sunday strollers and the curious elderly. Snaking around the [...]
Bulger live review London – April 2012
Two men were arguing about conspiracy theories as we neared the Three Crowns pub. One leaned against a Volvo, listening intently. The other shouted hoarsely about an army of Nazis hidden beneath Hampstead Heath. “The government knows about it!” This destitute part of London, all fast food and pound shops, seemed inadequately built to hold [...]
Detrimentum live review, London – April 2012
“Barry.” He shakes him again. “Barry, wake up.” “Uh?” “Get up.” Groaning, more groaning. “It’s time to get up.” “Yes?” “Yes.” “I had a dream, man. I was at the Unicorn.” “You are at the Unicorn.” One of the bar staff takes an empty from the table. There’s a breeze coming from the door, some [...]
Obscura Live Review, Underworld London – April 2012
“Which words?” “So far I have: magnificent, majestic, tremendous, awesome, phenomenal…” “They’re all synonyms for the same thing.” “They’re proxies for the same thing.” “What do you mean?” “They stand in for reality. They signify the feelings, represent the emotions.” “But their repetition lessens the effect. Isn’t that the case?” “Then I lose. Again.” “What [...]
Exhumed/Anaal Nathrakh Live Review Relentless Garage, London – March 2012
Another joins the queue. Looking furiously at her watch, she can only muster a sigh. Another chirps loudly behind us, listing recent album releases. They said the doors would open at 7pm; now it’s forty minutes later and the queue is unmoving and unmoved. We countenance the common outrage: as if queuing were catastrophic, imagining [...]
Fleshgod Apocalypse – Purple Turtle, London – Wednesday 7th March 2012
“But why?” asked Mrs Venables. “It’s a metaphor.” “What?” “It’s about expressing through indirect means.” “Expressing what?” “In this case, disappointment. Utter disappointment. All that could go wrong and all that.” “Can’t you just say that?” “Say what?” “I was disappointed. Disappointed for these reasons. And list the reasons.” “It wouldn’t have the same weight. [...]
Origin – Underworld, London – Friday 24th February 2012
The opening salvo was Psycroptic’s. A sledgehammer of brutal Death Metal from an antipodean source. Riffs spun through the winding scalar tornado that deigns to meet the intense needs of the gathered many. Fast and technical, all the musical requirements delivered to support the mighty Origin. What more was necessary? Scene setting on a quiet [...]
Rezinwolf/Thrash Thursday – The Unicorn, London – Thursday 23rd February 2012
“Permit me please to declare my discontent.” “What?” A fight. The smell of bins circulating in the air as he came round again, that man of violence, the irate pugilist, returning to face his foe. The kebab shop door was blocked. The man, shirt stained, dishevelled airs about his person, strode up to those gathered [...]
Krisiun – Underworld, London – Wednesday 15th February 2012
The following is an excerpt from the book Chaotic Enthusiasts: Metal Etiquette for the Uninitiated by Moses Goatshaman. This somewhat-autobiographical primer won awards for its unique look at the Metal scene. Unconventional though it was, it earned applauds from fans and critics alike and cemented the author’s reputation as a talented belletrist. The passages we [...]
Pain of Salvation – Relentless Garage, London – Monday 13th February 2012
Put in context, it was suitably schizophrenic. An intermixed stew of people and music packed into the Relentless Garage. Patches of Metal, dollops of Rock, piecemeal attempts at merging the two. Gorguts t-shirts and starched collars. Raging riffs and a single note stretched into silence. Furious headbanging and songstress warbling. Psychedelic abstraction running aside the [...]
Black Dahlia Murder – Underworld, London – Wednesday 11th January 2011
Good manners and conviviality were nowhere to be seen outside the Underworld. Normally an audience profile isn’t revealed until the venue’s been entered – then all the standard misanthropy can awaken, and the finest, darkest corner can be scouted for private weeping and wailing. But this time the damning truth was exposed at the door. [...]
Arceye/Betraeus – Purple Turtle, London – Thursday 8th December 2011
The early signs were bleak. A damp London night, the toxins of Christmas whirling through the streets, a shuffling contingent of office goons merrying under ground. And the Purple Turtle, lying beyond the mist, the quiet spot for a Thursday night affair. Early on it was set to be one of those gigs, often rehearsed [...]
Cynic – Relentless Garage, London – Monday 5th December 2011
Is there anything further from the humdrum existence of Holloway Road than the otherworldly music of Cynic? All the monotony, this road’s gift to the world, is a distant thought when set against Cynic’s art. Spit and dying rodents, empty packets of Walkers and discarded greasy chips, these are not the ingredients of Focus. One [...]
Arch Enemy – Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London – Tuesday 6th December 2011
The allure of the same. One sees it everywhere. The reuse and repeat of persons, objects and ideas – a carousel of the already-seen. Film directors cast the same image. Sculptors cast the same material. Philosophers cast the same concept. An accelerated resurrection machine that wears the veil of fecundity. Yet it’s not always a [...]
Blaze Bayley – Underworld, London – Friday 9th December 2011
Outside the Underworld a group of blokes, fresh from the pit below, stand around philosophising about cigarettes. They ruminate on taste, texture, potency, spouting metaphors to express their ideas more clearly. Connoisseurs, they exchange anecdotes and reach conclusions about the battle of rollies versus already-made. Nearby, a Big Issue seller muses on geography. Talk shifts [...]
Tyketto – Camden Underworld – 30th November 2011
Winter reminds us this evening of the pressing need for warmth, a soft, plump naked body to writhe against to fight the onset of winter’s malicious touch. The cold air a reminder of what we can expect over the coming months. The Camden night is plagued once again by its usual denizens, scarfs billowing behind [...]
Thrashing Mad Fest – Unicorn, London – Thursday 1st December 2011
Incongruous sights at the Unicorn. They always arise. It’s usually some octogenarian sitting by the bar as a grindcore band plays. Or a local eccentric comes in for a nappy change to the sound of furious Black Metal. The infirm of the local pub juxtaposed against the ragged black of the Metal crew; the quaint [...]
Morbid Angel – O2 Islington, London – Tuesday 24th November 2011
The history of bad ideas is rich and long. Isolate any time period and the dodgy choices are bound to be conspicuous. Of late we’ve suffered plenty. Lulu, Heritage, Road Salt, TH1RT3EN. Daggers, every one of them. They’re almost as bad as that website where people lie rigidly-horizontal reading French literature, Planking Proust.com, or the [...]
Neckbreakers Ball – Relentless Garage, London – Monday 7th November 2011
The roaming mini-festival has become increasingly popular. Event and place used to be inseparable. Witness Wacken, Roskilde– festivals so synonymous with locale that they couldn’t exist elsewhere. These are veritable settlements, as attuned to the dictates of land and need as the pilgrims of the past. Seek out the water source, the fertile land, the [...]
Bloodcell – The Water Rats – Tuesday 1st November 2011
Multi-genre showcase. These words inspire fear and revulsion. They throw you to the edge and abrasively cast you towards the void. They fling the noose around your neck and hoist you up on to the gallows. These abhorrent syllables are the gateway to a whole terrain of horror and madness. One’s grainy memories of [...]
Amon Amarth – HMV Forum – Sunday 23rd October 2011
Another fucking queue. What is it with a venue’s inability to open the doors on time? All it takes is a glance at the clock and a key in the hand. When we arrived at the HMV Forum it was 7.30, half an hour after the doors were supposed to open. The first band [...]
Symphony X – O2 Islington – Wednesday 26th October 2011
Cultural verities are hard to find, marked by an elusiveness that only increases with time. Many seekers conclude their search stymied and looking lost. In the dirty expanse of a corporate planet, with the onward march of relativism, notions of Truth are flung to the gutter, left quivering beside the battered corpses of Judgement and [...]
Heidenfest – HMV Forum – Tuesday 11th October 2011
It took only a few seconds to know that a part of North Londonwas playing host to something weird and whacky. Kentish Town, collector of the starchiest of Camden’s run-off, saw the gentlefolk nipping into betting shops or quainter pubs down the gangway, a ragged beggar rolling over the bridge east, a handful of [...]
Trifixion – Unicorn, London – Friday 30th September 2011
A strange thing occurred one Friday night. There was a mass disappearance in the citizenry of Metal. Before, happy ludic Metalheads had been roaming across fields, shimmying along concrete terraces, bounding through the city as a multitude, a poly-limbed organism coursing out of urban shackles into a weekend strain of freedom. Then they vanished. What [...]
Onslaught & Gama Bomb – Garage, London – Friday 23rd September 2011
Let’s start at the end. Some way out of place for the sobrieties of a Friday night, the laddish inquisitor approaches the bouncer. One stands six-feet and more; the other wobbles beneath his own torso. “What’s this going on in here? A concert?” A burp struggles up his throat, clawing upwards through gruel and vodka [...]
Firewind & Wolf – Sub89, Reading – 12th September 2011
Leaving London’s a terrifying event, full of uncertainties and risk, pain and threats of destruction. The fear gets us in the gut and we can’t repel the questions to which it gives rise. What bastard evil lies out there? The horizon of the river valley hides the horror’s reality, most of the details blotted [...]
Cannabis Corpse – Purple Turtle, London – Thursday 8th September 2011
Standing outside the Purple Turtle, grasping a sheet of A4. Few thoughts in the head but the ones droning in from the guys behind. “Why this queue? What’s with this queue? What the fuck?” And yes, indeed, it was inexplicable. The venue was open, the sound of Cavity Search could be heard beyond the [...]
Hellfest 2011 Day 2 – Saturday 18th June 2011 – Clisson, France
Waking up on a Saturday morning to the sounds of Death Metal growls and (surprisingly perfectly timed with the growls) Power Metal screeches and the clink of beer bottles emptied down the gullets of barbarian warrior throats, makes one happier than an autistic child in a room full of equations. Bliss. This festival day [...]
Hellfest 2011 Day 1 – Friday 17th June 2011 – Clisson, France
“Our day out.” An old British film about working-class schoolchildren in remedial class on a day out to a castle in northern Wales. Those of you over thirty years of age may remember it, a humourous but ultimately depressing look at working class limitations. It was just this thought that flashed across the mind as [...]
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