Live Review : Stygian Bough + 40 Watt Sun @ Rebellion, Manchester on February 9th 2026

This is no ordinary gig. There is a positive feeling of refinement about the usually lowbrow surroundings of Rebellion. Chamber music pumps out pre-bands, and a tall lad stands reading a book at the front of the stage. During Patrick Walker’s solo acoustic 40 Watt Sun set you can hear a pin drop. There are no sounds of unruly rabble attempting to drink the bar dry. Instead, there is a deathly hush as the audience as one hang on every word he sings. The same is true during the quiet sections Stygian Bough’s second track, ‘King of the Wood’. Even sly comments between friends about whether another drink is in order are berated by those wishing to indulge in every intricate note. The brutality and bravado is left at home, and instead this is metal at its most fragile, cerebral and emotive.

Patrick Walker may well have written a whole lexicon of tracks that reduce grown adults to quivering wrecks, but tonight he is in a playful, irreverent mood. In between five pristine stripped-down numbers from across 40 Watt Sun’s career, he regales us with flippant tales of trying to avoid the audience seeing a silhouette of him wiping his bum, un-wittingly plagiarising Eric Clapton, and how ‘Stages’ “goes on a bit”. He is wonderfully amiable and titillatingly inappropriate with revelations of his vasectomy and a review of the appalling state of the venue's toilets.

However, the comic asides fade from memory as soon as he opens his mouth, as Patrick Walker can break even the most stringent of hearts with just his voice. The world around him ceases to exist as he sings songs of bleak remorse and unrequited longing. It is beautiful in its sparse, austere nature. His voice penetrates deep into your soul, unlocking core memories and playing on your heartstrings like a harpsichord. It is minimal but also devastating. Emotionally wrought and full of raw passion. The crowd is enrapt and feasting from his hand. He goes for the cheap cheer of revealing that a new Warning album is forthcoming, but if we are honest the audience are as happy to be captured by the mournful majesty of his second incarnation. He may well have weaved a persona as the maestro of misery, but this evening he make a whole room very happy indeed.

Stygian Bough don’t actually exist. They are a collaboration between celebrated doom metal duo Bell Witch and the one-man unit semi-acoustic project Aerial Ruin. The first volume appeared during lockdown and was one of several albums that captured the mood of solitude and palpable anxiety. A short tour followed in 2022 (including an extraordinary appearance at Damnation) as they proved that the desolate soundscape could be replicated in a live setting. Tonight, they return with the second volume of Stygian Bough, which they perform in its entirety and in order. It comes out as one flowing suite of music with short gaps between the last three tracks simply to let Erik Moggridge drink from his unassuming plastic bottle of (presumably) bourbon. The quarter-full receptacle plays its own starring role as the evening unfolds with the liquid dancing and throwing shapes to the reverberations and vibrations that bellow forth.

It is quite an extraordinary performance. Restrained and insular but also expansive and all-consuming. It is funeral slow, creeping out in sluggish, penetrative manner. It is in no hurry to reveal its secrets. Instead, each of the four tracks builds in intensity, fooling us that they have reached their peak, to only then pile on another load of percolating power. Final number ‘The Told and the Leadened’ has more false endings than “Return of the king”. Just as you feel you have escaped its clutches, it drags you back in with an additional passage, often contradicting and juxtaposing the last. It is astonishing, edifying and utterly hypnotic.

Jesse Shreibman’s drumming plays a central role. Because the music it accompanies is, at times, delicate and fragile, you can hear every beat and roll. It drives forward the musical compositions, operating as a fantastical ying to the stutle guitars yangs. There are points where it feels that Jesse is playing a different song, if not style to the rest of his co-creators. He bleeches forward magnificent flourishes, rich with speed and power as his collaborators meander in introspective loops. But it all comes together in a stunningly immense maelstrom of brooding power and intense furousity. It a classical recital gone feral, the bastard child of Candlemass and an art installation. It is a sound bath of sonic velocity that shakes both the body and mind. An astonishing experience.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Stygian Bough + 40 Watt Sun