Live Review : Kreator + Carcass + Exodus + Nails @ O2 Apollo, Manchester on March 28th 2026

It is hard to imagine, but there was a time when Kreator were not the ubiquitous, imperious and omnipresent force of nature that they are today. This is their third appearance in this fair city in as many years, and their stature just keeps growing. Not bad for a band from the eighties that were practically written off during the nineties. The Apollo is completely sold out, and the crowd is an explosive mix of old school metal heads and a younger variety of punters that have become hooked on these Teutonic masters in the last decade. It may seem weird to say this about a band that was a pivotal component of thrash’s first coming, but this is not an exercise in nostalgia. They may well be entering their fifth decade as an outfit, but this is without a doubt their heyday.

With only twenty years on the clock, Nails are very much the young whippersnappers on the undercard. They arrive with a fearsome reputation intact, having laid waste to Damnation Festival in 2024 and 2017. There is an intrinsic simplicity to their nihilistic noise. Everything is stripped back to its primal form, and there is no frills or padding to be seen. In just under thirty minutes, they hurtle through thirteen tracks, each one as barbarically brutal as the next. It is raw, potent and utterly unrepentant. The guitars are like blistering buzzsaws, searing through the air with malicious intent. There is as much punk to be found here as metal; this is music full of righteous anger and desolate despondency.

The crowd grows towards capacity during the set and laps up the swirling negativity. Todd Jones fires out f-bombs like they are going out of fashion, consistently thanking the crowd for bringing the energy and crying out to be booked again for this city’s Damnation Festival. He counts us down during the ferment and fertile last three tracks. ‘Endless Resistance’ sequences into a majestic malevolent one-two of the title tracks from their debut records and their signature release. ‘You Will Never Be One Of Us’ is persistent in its minimalistic terror, whilst ‘Unsilent Death’ clatters with chaotic cohesion. An absolutely magnificent exercise in the rampant power of nasty noise.

With a heritage that stretches back to 1979, Exodus can claim to be the eldest of tonight’s veteran acts. Only drummer Tom Hunting remains from those far-off days, with fellow mainstay (and part-time Slayer guitarist) Gary Holt arriving in 1981. Alongside Testament, Exodus have always been seen as an administrative omission from the prescribed big four of thrash. In many ways, their early eighties demos were a veritable blueprint for this emerging genre, and they are as deserving of the platitudes as their more venerated peers. These are their first UK appearances since Rob Dukes returned to vocal duties, and they also come bearing their first new album in five years, in the shape of the recently dropped “Goliath”. 

They are riotously enjoyable, a cacophony of galloping guitars and jaunty riffs. By throwing out “Bonded By Blood” imperious title track second song in, they immediately win over all the ageing thrashers in the house. The room sings along with passion and blistering power. The same is true when they unveil ‘A Lesson In Violence’ from the same record. Bodies that should know better collide into each other, intent on recapturing their sordid youth. Via a slightly bizarre Freddie Mercury pastiche,  Rob manages to get the crowd eating out of his hands. He obviously enjoys the trolling of the audience with a snippet of ‘Raining Blood’ from Gary’s much more lucrative sideline, with the bravado quickly sequencing into the magnificent ‘The Toxic Waltz’. It was impressively simmering, but now the Apollo absolutely explodes in dynamic merriment. A brilliant reminder that the originators of thrash may not be exactly who you actually think.

There is a misheld opinion that the most important and influential band to originate from Merseyside was a bunch of bowl-cut lads in the sixties that started life as the Quarrymen. That is not the truth. Liverpool’s greatest musical gift to the world is and remains Carcass. They are responsible for kick-starting the evolution of metal not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions. Their repugnant debut album, “Reek of Putrefaction” belched forth a vile, unrepentant form of metal that spoke to those of us who wanted their music to be as repellent as the album covers. Come the early nineties, they redefined death metal with the sublime “Necroticism – Descanting the Insalubrious”, bringing a level of technicality that altered the genre forever. They then reinvented themselves once more with the extraordinary “Heartwork”, the veritable blueprint for melodic death metal that was hungrily picked up by a plethora of young men in Gothenburg.

It is such a magnificent body of work that it still dominates Carcass’s setlist thirty-three years later. ‘Buried Dreams’, ‘Death Certificate’, ‘No Love Lost’ and imperious title track provide a canvas for Bill Steer to showcase why he is by far the most underrated guitarist in metal. Carcass are on blistering form, even with a fill-in drummer. The usual incumbent of the drum stool, Daniel Wilding, is unavailable, and Opeth’s Waltteri Väyrynen has stepped in with a moment's notice, and with, as Jeff Walker points out, no rehearsal. He is an astonishing sub, managing to keep up with the rampant and unrelenting speed of the material. There is no room for any form of respite. Carcass’s set is a machine-gun-like canter through ten awe-inspiring tracks.

With only 1996’s “Swansong” ignored, they manage to touch upon almost all corners of their recorded output. ‘Genital Grinder’ and ‘Exhume to Consume’ are dispensed with, joined at the hip, proving just how deliciously decadent and ferociously nasty they originally sounded. However, the defining takeaway from the evening is that despite the unrepentant obnoxious nature of their material, Carcass are one of, if not the most, technically brilliant metal act currently treading the boards. The musicianship is frankly astonishing in its dexterity as well as its velocity. It is also heartwarming to see them treated with the rampant euphoria that they deserve. There is no band that as shaped metal as much as they have, and tonight it feels like every bugger in the Apollo suddenly realises their immense importance. 

Kreator brilliantly build the anticipation. ‘Run To The Hills’ blaring through the speakers unites the room in a communal sing-along, and then an immersive AI-induced compilation of brutality down the ages is projected on the white sheet stretched out in front of the stage, accompanied by P.F. Solan’s poignant ‘Eve Of Destruction’. When the sheet is removed, there is a collective wow as the extent and ambition of tonight's staging is finally revealed. Kreator have gone to town and then some, crafting a hell scape that is wondrous in its depth and visual nature. A massive incarnation of Violent Mind hovers in what seems like mid-air, with smoke bellowing out of his gaping cranial. Then there is the pyro. Plumes of flames shot up, down and across during almost every number, and the heat can be felt at the back of the room. Carpets of flames encircle the band later in the set, and the whole thing is a treasure trove of heart-pounding set pieces.

But a overzealous pyro provider doesn’t itself make a show. Performance-wise, Kreator are utterly on top form and completely justify why they are now, forty-odd years in, bigger than they ever have been. It is an incendiary ride through their illustrious catalogue. They choose to ignore the vast majority of the nineties output, and instead, the set exclusively consists of choice cuts from their initial eighties’ emergence and their 21st century rehabilitation. Not only do we get at least one song from everything released post 2001, they act as the big moments of the set, heralding apocalyptic sing-alongs and rampant audience participation. It is a fervent reminder that Kreator are not a nostalgia act and more relevant now than they have ever been.

The set is beautifully paced with the four tracks from 2025’s “Krushers of the World” spread out across the sixteen aired numbers in order to maintain the momentum. ‘Endless Pain’ comes with a heartfelt soliloquy from Miland ‘Mille’ Petrozza about how they travelled to Berlin to record the first album. He comes across as having the same level of spirited belief as he did as a teenager (he was just seventeen when they recorded the first record). It's that kinetic energy that spills off the stage. Every track is treated as a cacophonous closing number, every track is a big moment and that level of triumphant passion is highly infectious.

There is no encore as such. Just a magnificent final furlong of ‘Phantom Antichrist’ with torched effigies, an anthemic ‘666 – World Divided’ and then a culminating finale of ‘Violent Revolution’ and ‘Pleasure to Kill’, ratcheting up production values one final time as the fire rains down. With the now traditional proclamation of ‘the Kreator will return,’ they bid us good night and bring to a conclusion to an utterly compelling celebration of heaviness. Every band brought a headliner's attitude and aptitude to their performance and were rewarded with a reaction fit for a closing act. With the sold-out signs proudly on display, this evening showed that deep into its sixtieth decade, metal is as healthy if not healthier, than it has ever been.