Live Review : Cryptopsy + 200 Stab Wounds + Inferi + Corpse Pile @ Club Academy, Manchester on January 22nd 2026

Tonight promises a full spectrum of musical extremity - slam, tech, thrash‑tinged death, and one of the pioneers of technical brutality in Cryptopsy. Four bands, one small basement room, plenty of rabidly enthusiastic death metal fans, and the potential for structural or even personal damage.

Corpse Pile open proceedings, offering exactly the sort of brutal slam death metal we’ve come to expect of the crew from Houston, Texas. It’s brutal but also familiar to the point of déjà vu. Their sound unfortunately comes across as a generic, muddy churn, the guitars thick but murky, the vocals a swampy burble from the depths. The crowd give them respect, nodding appreciatively at the sheer weight of the performance, but it’s hard to escape the sense that I’ve heard this set played by a hundred bands before. Effective, but not exactly distinctive.

Next up we have Inferi, and within seconds it feels like a different gig. They bring their brand of technical melodic death metal forged on the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, and the contrast is stark. Their intention to merge the classic melodic metal sound with a taste of crushing technicality is alive and kicking tonight. Everything is clearer in the technical guitar work - the stark harmonising solo lines and the precision of each slick, spiralling passage. It’s tech‑death with delightful dynamics. The vocals swing between high screech and thundering growl, each delivered with surgical accuracy. The crowd responds throughout - surfers appear overhead, tumbling like bodies in wave of feet, arms and torsos - and the energy ramps up even further with each song. Inferi are a band that any fans of The Black Dahlia Murder need to have a listen to - darkly melodic, razor‑sharp, and utterly confident. By the final song, when the vocalist himself goes crowd surfing, the room is electric.

If Inferi were a precision strike, 200 Stab Wounds are a bar‑fight erupting in a saloon. The Cleveland quartet step onstage to a packed full crowd from the off, with loads of their t‑shirts already bought and visible across the room. They immediately unleash their blend of more classical thrashy death metal - all fast, driving momentum punctuated by bursts of noodling guitar runs. The vocals are gravelly and guttural, a harsh bark that feels ripped straight from hell. Musically, it’s dirty thrash riffs into churning bludgeoning, the sort of thing that feels like a bluesy band doing genuine death metal - swinging, swaggering, but still gritty enough to keep it authentic. The pit transforms into a feral swirl, expanding and contracting in violent harmony with every riff. It’s rough, satisfying, and fully embraced by an already devoted crowd.

Then the house lights drop, and instead of silence, the room is filled with the unmistakable chimes of ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ with the entire song played before our headliners come out. Cryptopsy emerge, and immediately the air is torn apart by the guys from Montreal. Their reputation as technical death metal pioneers precedes them, but experiencing it at close range is something else entirely. The opening is a maelstrom of pulsating double kick drum, extremely fast guitar work, rumbling growls. It’s a constant wall of non-stop metal carnage, impenetrable and overwhelming. Flo Mounier’s legendary blast-beat drumming shakes the venue - the beats actually pound the bar ledges at the back of the room. Down the front, the loyalists are in ecstasy, lapping it up like nectar from evil gods. This is technicality at its most violent with every song an avalanche of notes and intent. In the few moments where the guitars shift into more open, melodic phrasing, the bassist brings out the signature twanging bass tone, and the vocals move to piercing high screeches, it feels like a breath - a pause in the suffocation. But of course, everything is relative, and for any other band these passages would be the climactic heaviest part, not the respite. By the latter half of the set, technical death and grind collide in a chaotic wall of metal so dense it almost feels suffocatingly enveloping. Cryptopsy far from simply perform - they dominate, overwhelm, and annihilate.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Cryptopsy + 200 Stab Wounds + Inferi + Corpse Pile