“Manifestation of the new flesh.“
The unfortunate task of opening a show happening well within office hours has fallen on Texas Crossover crew Life Cycles, who’s classic, thrash inspired riffs are supplemented with enough beatdowns to pack some serious bite and prove an instant hit with the battle-jacketed headbangers in the crowd, taking an unenviable situation and turning it into a chance to shake the cobwebs off the room in style.
Life Cycles
With the room now rapidly filling, Distant explodes into action – while they may not enjoy the spotlight afforded to bigger bands in the scene, frontman Alan Grnja‘s highest screeches and guttural lows are a match for any of deathcore’s heavyweights, and he is on throat-tearing form tonight. Inciting the crowd between bursts of stomach-churning bass drops and slams, they may not be reinventing the wheel, but when it’s done this well, deathcore is very, very easy to enjoy.
Distant
Online critics are often quick to point out similarities between Frozen Soul and a certain much-loved 90s death metal band, and while those comparisons can be safely considered accurate, the memorable riffs and character are absolutely present too. Their razor-sharp modernisation of a classic sound is too infectious to deny. Relentless touring has polished both the band and songs like “Morbid Effigy” and “Arsenal of War” into lethal weapons, leaving sore necks and ringing eardrums in their wake.
Frozen Soul
Revocation‘s progressive take on death metal sets them aside from the rest of tonight’s lineup; songs from last year’s full-length New God’s, New Master’s indulge their love of noodling riffs and unorthodox pacing without sacrificing a sense of urgency and memorability. It’s hard to strike a balance between exploration and enjoyability when adding the “prog” prefix in any genre, but Revocation manages to strike a winning balance.
Revocation
Through 25 years of touring, loss and line-up changes The Black Dahlia Murder have remained steadfast, pushing the Gothenburg sound to its limits, their influence loomed large over the early metalcore and deathcore scenes and in sheer spite for their age sound fresher than ever, some of the set may be, as frontman Brian Eschbach points out “be old enough to drink in America” yet still manage to feel relevant placed alongside any of the younger bands on the bill.
The Black Dahlia Murder
Heaven Shall Burn are the most pedigreed band on the bill tonight, veterans of the 90s edge-metal and 00s metalcore scenes that have managed to mature their sound while staying true to the ethos and ethics of their hardcore roots. It’s also safe to say that while they sit comfortably at the apex of the European metal scene they’ve never reached the same appreciation in the UK and further abroad, and tonight it is very hard to see why, they attack the stage with an energy that belies their age and launch into a relentless stream of classics, songs like “Forlorn Skies” are carried on pummelling waves of kick pedal and duelling harmonies that wake a dormant crowd into a fit of action, and by the time they end on a triumphant “Godiva” even security are having fun with the stream of incredibly enthusiastic surfers rolling over the barrier.
Heaven Shall Burn
Sylosis have been playing for and paying their dues for more than a quarter-century, and tonight, on the release of their seventh album The New Flesh and their largest headline show to date, it’s clear that all the effort has paid off. Remaining a difficult band to pigeonhole, their sound draws upon many of metal’s myriad sub-genres without ever fully falling into any one of them. What has always been consistent, however, is frontman Josh Middleton, and it’s his fiercely technical, thrash-inspired riffs and dominating vocal performance that take centre stage tonight. Managing to touch on each of the distinct eras of the band while paying special attention to the new material, songs like “Erased” and “Lacerations“are fresh additions to the canon but are clearly crowd pleasers already and speak of the confidence Sylosis hold in the progress of their songwriting, “All Glory, No Valor” sounds absolutely massive, an anthem to rival anything Trivium or Malevolence have put out in the last few years, and with an albums worth of this material in the tank there’s no telling where 2026 is taking Sylosis.
Sylosis
You can read our review of Sylosis‘ latest record, The New Flesh, here.