229, Portland Place, London
Thursday, December 2023
Review by Smudge
A pre-Christmas death metal experience was just the ticket with Decapitation celebrating the 20th anniversary of their monster album ‘Nihility’ which they played in its entirety.
Poland’s Materia didn’t hang about and got straight into their brand of crushing technical death metal. What the fuck the third song was all about I have no idea, but they brought it all back with some superb melodic death on ‘Bay 17’ which had some clean vocals.
Inferi came from Nashville, Tennessee but they didn’t bring any country twang with them. It was a barrage of crushing blackened death metal and how the fuck singer Stevie can talk after singing that stuff is beyond me. They truly slayed, and the crowd lapped them up.
Obscura started with a bass solo! Seriously! They brought a superb set of melodic prog-inspired death metal, and they weren’t afraid to ease off the gas and bring the heavy. There was a great mix of styles and tempo’s which catered for every taste.
I love the anticipation of the headline act coming on. The roadies complete their last checks and either the thumbs up or the flashing of the torch signal to the sound engineer. Jeez they brought the brutality from the off and man, were they tight! It was a no-brainer for Machine Head to recruit guitarist Vogg – the guy is a machine who fires off riffs like a sharpshooter and can solo like any top shredder. Singer Rasta didn’t have to cajole the crowd because they were with him from the off. The whole of ‘Nihility’ was aired in the first 30 minutes without a break. Then a Napalm Death cover ‘Suffer The Children’ went into more recent releases such as ‘Day 69’, ‘Post (?) Organic’, ‘Cancer Culture’ and ‘Just A Cigarette’. Unfortunately, due to train times, I had to cut my losses, but I had it on good authority that the mayhem continued, and the capacity crowd were pummelled with four more tunes.
Another fantastic package tour of quality extreme metal and judging by the sold-out crowd – a roaring success. Here’s to the next one in 2024!
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