If you look at the posters for this year's Radar and ArcTanGent festivals, they are littered with performers that simply would not exist without Sikth. Call it mathcore, call it tech-metal or even call it, if you dare, djent. The simple fact is that Sikth birthed a sound and approach that now paths the more interesting of metal’s byways. Like all good innovators, they have been overtaken by ...
Read MoreTonight is a story of quality over quantity. For a tour that will move into arenas when it arrives on the continent, Academy 2 is criminally underpopulated. However, the sparse attendance enhances rather than detracts from the evening. Every member of the pit pushes harder and faster, creating a hurricane of havoc that quite simply elevates the atmosphere. Those of us unwilling or unable to sprint …
Read MoreThere is a point during Drug Church's opening set when the monumental shift in Deftones popularity and support base suddenly makes sense. Patrick Kindlon decides to undertake a census of the tribes within the enormous aircraft hangar that is the Co-op live. His call out for old-skool metalheads elicits some sporadic cheers. When he asks for nu-metallers, there is more recognition but still ...
Read MoreThe ascension of Lorna Shore has frankly been astonishing. It is astonishing that a band this extreme, this heavy and this uncompromising has connected so easily with the mainstream. They do not deal in watered-down, commercial-friendly variations. This is full-on ball-breaking and boundary-splitting deathcore. Yet here we are in a massively oversold warehouse complex with an audience that ...
Read MoreThis 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 ...
Read MoreThere is a fallacy that metal is a consistent whole. It is not. It is a vast tower of Babel of interlinking sub-genres. One of the most idiosyncratic of these many differing components is folk metal. It is born from a desire by, mainly, Scandinavians to combine the forbidden fruits of metal with the traditional folk music of their ancestry. It itself has grown into its own complex catacomb of ...
Read MoreAs Roy Schediour once proclaimed “We are going to need a bigger boat”. The Ritz is not just heaving; it is positively bulging at the sides. Whilst the box office inexplicably still seems to be trying to flog the last remaining tickets, there is scant room inside to breathe, let alone move. Jinjer have firmly graduated from potential to being a thing. What is really interesting is that the crowd ..
Read MoreIf you can find the right match-up, a co-headlining tour is veritable box office gold. Whilst increasingly big draws in this country, neither Epica nor Amaranthe are on their own ready to headline the cavernous confines of the Manchester Apollo. Yet here we are with the sold-out sign firmly in place and a venue that is packed from top to bottom.
Read MoreRock 'n' roll is founded on controversy. From Elvis swinging his hips in a sexualised manner, through the Beatles declaring themselves to be bigger than Jesus, the Sex Pistols dropping the F-bomb on prime-time telly and onto Ozzy urinating on the Alamo while wearing one of Sharon's dresses. One of its fundamental tenets is to cause the generation before it to look at their children and say, “don’t grow up like that”. The latest in a long line of controversial acts to shake the moral fibre of the nation are Russian/British deathcore agitators Slaughter to Prevail.
Read MoreWe 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.
Read MoreThere is a divine beauty in darkness. In the shrouded bleakness, if you look hard enough, you will always find hope, redemption, and immaculate splendour. For respectively thirty-four and twenty-five years, Saturnus and Swallow The Sun have been mining the melancholic gloom for the glimmers of positivity. They both operate in a corner of the doom metal universe that is melodic and tinged with sadness as opposed to sadism. It is doom metal in the fact that it is slow and pendulous in its delivery, but it has an emotive and poignant core, focusing on affairs of the heart instead of the more fanciful and fantastic.
Read MoreHow do you get more intimate than the sweat box that is The Deaf Institute upstairs room? The answer is plain and simple, you can move the whole shebang downstairs into the main pub. This evening's event has the feel of having a band play your Nan’s front room. It's claustrophobic, in places it is shambolic, and you're not going to find any self-respecting cat getting itself swung round this place. But it embodies the true spirit of rock n‘ roll. You can take your arenas, you can take your Apollo's and you can shove your Academies up whatever orifice you fancy; this is where our music thrives, this is its foundry and this is its source.
Read MoreIf you strip metal back to its molten core, you will find Conan. They synthesise the base element of ungodly weight that makes metal, metal and celebrate the simplistic beauty of that gnarly heaviness. There is something ritualistic and primal about their approach; by removing all the elements that have aided metal's evolution, they reboot everything to a point where it is all about the heaviness.
Read MoreThere is prestige in becoming an arena-level act. It signifies a shift from making it to having made it, a sense of sustainability. It is a badge of honour to be able to fill cavernous rooms, a status symbol. It is a state of affairs that many bands aspire to, but few actually achieve. Halestorm are one of a number of acts attempting to make that jump from theatres to enormodomes. In many ways they achieve the feat unscathed and with their integrity intact.
Read MoreSvalbard may well cover unsettling subject matters, but they always had an element of joy about them. The music they choose to accompany their treaties on depression and isolation has consistently had a euphoric element to it. It uplifts as opposed to grinding down the listener. Whilst Serena Cherry cheekily welcomes us to their funeral, tonight's final performance in Manchester before they call it a day, has an air of celebration as opposed to commiseration. Serena herself is positively bouncy and comes across as being in a particularly healthy state of mind. It is obvious they are very proud of everything the band has achieved, but that they are also very aware of when to step away. As Serena declares midway through the show, “We are ending like we started, with passion in our hearts and no money in our bank accounts”.
Read MoreLike a pumpkin left on the porch, Wednesday 13 is here to provide Halloween vibes after the big day has come and gone. Now whilst Wednesday 13 may have long ago decided the UK is a lucrative market for shock horror rock 'n' roll antics, this is his third tour of this isle in twelve months and there is a distinct whiff of diminishing returns. The 1,500 capacity Ritz has shifted 350 tickets, and ...
Read MoreCoheed and Cambria have always been a very interesting and difficult-to-pigeonhole proposition. But when you get down to it, they are essentially classic rock for hipsters. Their sound is slick, immaculately produced and eminently sing-alongable to. What elevates them, though from being yet another band with catchy choruses and melodic hooks is the intellect and concepts behind their material. Every track is part of a massive, multifaceted, fantastical tale.
Read MoreTonight, Manchester is metal city, but there is a distinct air of age demarcation going on. If you are under 35 then you are off to Co-op Live to witness Architects' ascension to greatness in Europe’s biggest arena. However, those of the disposition of being over 35 you are heading to the Academy for a stunningly retro celebration of a musical art form that is now well into its fifties. This iteration of Thrash of The Titans brings together all the distinct flavours of the flash in the pan movement that steadfastly refuses to die. We have new blood from South America in the shame of Nervosa, teutonic terror from Destruction, old school thrash/death hybrid from Obituary and a headline stint from a band that should be king, the almighty and still thoroughly underrated Testament.
Read MoreIt is now de rigueur to describe the early 90s UK metal scene as a bit of a desolate wasteland laid bare by the cataclysmic influence of grunge and American alt-rock. Whilst Seattle’s influence was far-reaching, in West Yorkshire, something quite incredible was forming. Whilst Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride (and Anathema over on Merseyside) were aware of each other, their brands of Gothic metal developed independently of each other. More a collection of bands with shared influences than a scene, it still proved that not every new act wanted to sound like they came from over the pond.
Read MoreThis evening is all about expectation. Blood Incantation blew everyone away last year with an album that challenged the very core of our music. “Absolutely Elsewhere” topped every end-of-year chart going (including our own), and the furore started to build about seeing these songs come to life in a live context. The size of venues on this tour is a massive step up for a band that has previously haunted the tiny but legendary Nambucca in London (now horribly gentrified). The expectation is both how the astonishing Tablet suite (that makes up the whole album) is reproduced in the flesh and also how Blood Incantation cope with their sudden, but well-deserved, transfer to the big league.
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