Live Review : Born Of Osiris + Within Destruction + Aversions Crown + Larcenia Roe @ Academy 3, Manchester on January 13th 2026

We are now into the second week of 2026 and we are very much back to business as usual. We start the year in many ways as we ended it with an extremely tasty quadruple bill that illustrates the array of different flavours and textures currently available within extreme music. All four bands represented here this evening in some way galvanise around what we know as death metal, but all four bands come to this musical mecca from incredibly different directions. It is like watching four distinctly diverse interpretations of the same play. There is a shared DNA, but the shells it is housed within are remarkably different.

This evening takes the form of a United States sandwich with the first and last acts hailing from across the pond. Larcenia Roe are Ryan Vail from Synestia’s other outfit. They are unapologetically deathcore; nasty, repugnant and wonderfully archaic and chaotic. Of all the acts on the offer, they are probably the most raw and vicious. They sidestep the technicality of their touring partners and instead bring into play a brutality that is reminiscent of early Slipknot. Fuelled by Ryan’s screeching pig squeals, they provide an unsettling but exhilarating start to proceedings.

Aversions Crown are a much more housetrained proposition. They are probably best known as where Thy Art Is Murder got their current vocalist from, but there is actually a lot more to be found in their self-defined progressive alien deathcore than simply a nursery for talent that goes onto bigger and better things. Yes, they are relentlessly brutal, but there is a depth and breadth to that brutality that gives it a kaleidoscopic feel. There is a sense of structure and constructed architecture. This is deathcore with clear parameters and technical know-how. It is crushingly heavy but also immaculately rendered. The guitar playing is impressively virtuoso, skilful and full of driving passion. A brilliant exercise in cohesive beauty.

Slovenia’s Within Destruction are a hard beast to pigeonhole. Their sound is a magical mystery tour around the many byways of modern metal. It is also laced with geek chic and there is a large dollop of Japanese cultural references at play, especially regarding their latest record, “Animetal”. The biggest realisation is how playful a band they are, they are less intense than the acts that preceded them and instead, there is a gleeful sense of joyful abandonment about their performance. Rok Rupnik bounces around the stage like a toddler on a sugar rush. He makes several attempts to start a circle pit, but on our side of the barrier, there is a distinct lack of hedonistic appetite to kick the crap out of each other. We instead end up with a group of people politely running around the venue as they are participating in a Sunday park run. 

After years of existing as a three piece there finally seems to be a bassist in tow and their sound is large and all embracing. This evening there are several instances where they feel distinctly nu-metal. There is a definite air of vintage Korn and the desire not to take themselves seriously smacks of Limp Bizkit in their prime. This is a band who are having fun. There are colourblind to metals barriers and divisions and instead they happily throw in electronic elements and samples with no thought of the consequences. The audience is enthusiastically curious even if they fail to replicate the pit led mayhem that Rok desires. The overall impression is of a band that has no desire to play by anybody's rules but their own.

Born of Osiris write short but incredibly complex songs. In just over an hour, we get sixteen chunks of intricate technicality. It is as if they have decided to squeeze lengthy 10-minute anthems worth of ideas into pithy two and a half minute ditties. Every single track played this evening is just brimming with ideas, ambition and aspiration. There is so much going on within each song that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with the distinct musical plotlines. This is technical metal taken to its nth degree, and instead of trying to desperately understand all that is going on, you find yourself having to step back and just marvel at the musical ability at play.  

The front of the stage is adorned with vanity steps, obviously purloined from Within Destruction (they have the distinct masks embossed on them). Guitarists Nick Rossi and Travis Montgomery and bassist Dan Marinaro all jockey for position on these pieces of stage furniture, meaning that vocalist Ronnie Canizaro is a lot of the time buried behind them, going about his business semi-hidden from the crowd. This works out okay as it is simply astonishing to watch Nick and Travis's fingers blur their way around their fretboards, unleashing unfathomably intricate sets of notes. This is the antidote to anybody who tries to portray metal as being simplistic and unrefined.

The tracks shot past at hyper speed. Five tracks from the rather splendid new album “Through the Shadows” are dispensed with early doors. The title track is joined at the hip to the astonishingly verbose ‘Inverno’. Nick’s solo is just spine-tinglingly erudite, a masterclass in euphoric exclamation. Basically, death metal should not sound this crisp, clear and cerebral. They have taken a musical form that usually has to mind its table manners and given it a PhD. Once they've got the obligatory new stuff out of the way, they conspire to unleash some serious damage by casting the spotlight on 2011’s breakthrough “The Discovery”. With machine-gun-like velocity, ‘Regenerate’, ‘Recreate’, ‘Devastate’ and ‘Singularity’ are dispensed within rapid succession. It is a remarkable salvo of multifaceted metal, rich with creativity and compulsion.  With three of the four tracks having been sidelined since the album's release, the band show obvious pleasure in being able to revisit tracks that defined their uniquely intelligent sound. 

The brevity of the material means that the end comes shockingly quickly. An audience that has spent most of the show standing in stupefied wonder suddenly spring into action, demanding the band return to the performance area. ‘Machine’ from their third release “Tomorrow We Die Alive” is greeted with rapturous reverence as it brings the show to a high octane conclusion. People talk about thinking person's metal, well, this is metal for the quantum mind. A dazzling display of precision-engineered musicianship that feels unworldly and unsurpassable. Awe-inspiringly astonishing.  

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Born Of Osiris + Within Destruction + Aversions Crown + Larcenia Roe