“Do you understand the melancholic tears of the stranger?”
Words by Dobbin T. Photography by Kieran White, please contact before any use.
If you’re a tech fan and you’re deciding who your favourite band is, SikTh are an easy and elite choice. You can point to them as the origin and popularisers of djent way back in the early 00s, and to this day their style and uniqueness has not been matched. Progressive riffing and offbeat ideas populate almost every song, with plenty of immediate tracks and cryptic ones too. The dual vocals of Mikee Goodman and Justin Hill create a busy frontend that bursts with dynamics and character. Somewhat frustratingly, it feels as though the band have been on hiatus for most of their existence, hitting stages just enough to keep the dust off. Death of a Dead Day is arguably their greatest work, well worth a proper celebration as it turns twenty. The band opted for a mini-tour – Manchester and London, playing the record in full at each location – and will play ArcTanGent later this year.
Ted Maul
Ted Maul were an absolutely left-field opener for the night, offering a throwback to some more 00s sounds, this time in the vein of metalcore and deathcore with some nu metal excursions. The tracks were plenty enjoyable, especially if you were one of the few who knew them back in the day as the UK’s underground answer to Slipknot, and still landed with a fair few otherwise. Vocalist Solomon J Lucifer Christ (not kidding), also of Red Method, offered a solid range to the material and a bold stage presence while Sam Loynes of Akercocke and Voices fame jumped on for a few shouty features. Despite these positive aspects, the set left an odd taste. They were fighting against a muddy mix where clean vocal samples seemed to fire at random, and offered very non-committal attempts to fire the early crowd up. A ‘bit’, where the guitarist smashed a (sugar) glass bottle against Solomon’s head after he ‘stepped on some pedals’, landed like a wet tea towel. We also could really have done without Solomon miming a wank during a very reasonable guitar solo. It’s fair to say there’s excitement for Ted Maul’s return, but perhaps going straight to a 2000+ capacity room wasn’t the right format for it.
Heriot
To us, Heriot are far from green, but they were still the new kids on the block when it came to a decidedly Gen X line up. They had a spectacular 2024 with Devoured by the Mouth of Hell landing at #2 on our end of year list and have moved from strength to strength since. Their last significant outing was as the opener for the Trivium and Jinjer US tour, perhaps explaining why this support set was so professional. They enjoyed the best mix of the whole night with amazing low end and controlled mids that led the ear to whichever lead part was firing, be it a delicious metalcore riff, industrial punishment from the drums, or the amazing vocals of Debbie Gough. She had two mics set up – one to give her clean vocals a hint of reverb on the stunning “Opaline”, and the other was mercilessly dry, letting everyone know how twisted her harsh vocal delivery is. A convinced crowd got to moshing before the first song was done, with several circle pits spinning and crowdsurfers going over the ramparts. They closed on “At The Fortress Gate” which was absolutely flooring, turning Birmingham rage into riffs so rudimentary they became medieval.
SikTh
SikTh’s set list was hardly a secret – Death of a Dead Day in all its glory. Across the album there were all sorts of amazing moments, with the first few tracks being the most celebrated for a good reason, garnering big crowd responses for “Bland Street Bloom” and “Flogging The Horses“. Some additional meaning was added to a few songs: “Part of the Friction” was about frustrations of the music industry, “In This Light” was dedicated to anyone dealing with loss. There was a brief surprise when a partial “When Will The Forest Speak” was delivered by Goodman – if this show and ArcTanGent 2023 were anything to go by, it seems the band will only let him do it in the tuning breaks.
My only knock is that Death of a Dead Day does drop off in quality for “Where Do We Fall?” and “Another Sinking Ship”, but scanning the room revealed that these pieces were the favourites of quite a few others. “As The Earth Spins Round” was as legendary as it needed to be to close out the record, an extremely chaotic track that offers everything SikTh in spades. Two additional tracks followed: “Pussyfoot” was inevitable and is an incredible live track, and “Skies of Millenium Night” was the perfect ending, as if they’d picked it for seventeen year old me.
With original bassist James Leach unable to join the band (something that’s becoming semi-regular in occurrence), the crowd were happy to settle for Adam “Nolly” Getgood of Periphery and every home studio VST library. Nolly was careful to honor Leach’s amazing lines. Admittedly the mix was a good deal busier than hoped – there’s simply a lot going on in the mid range in SikTh’s music, and with more frequent shows they’d probably sort it all out. Still, all the key aspects of the band shone, especially the tag team vocals which are an absolute thing to behold.
The stage setup has some fierce competition from recent O2 Forum Kentish Town shows we’ve seen, namely Jinjer’s colossal screen setup, but the four pillar-screens that Sikth brought added strong visual flair. Given this was just for two shows, it was probably about the right spend for the band. Near the end Goodman took a moment to tease the band’s future, especially around the idea of a new album. At the same time, he admitted the band weren’t exactly busy – this was their ninth gig in six years. We’ve duly learned not to set our expectations too high, so, SikTh: please take your time with whatever you’re up to, just don’t go away quite yet.