Gig Review Crystal Lake – Manchester O2 Ritz

Words and pictures: Phil Ingham

Anyone familiar with the world of Japanese metalcore will know that there is far more to it than just a Japanese texture being applied to western heavy music. The bands emerging from that scene tend to be technically precise, happy to bend genre conventions and utterly brutal. Crystal Lake, here tonight as main support to industrial metal giants Fear Factory, have spent two decades honing their craft within that world.

Such is their reputation as a live act, I had messages from several people urging me to arrive at the venue ahead of the headline set to catch Crystal Lake. I needed no encouragement. The wonderful Ritz was already filling nicely ahead of their support set, with the early attenders having been already treated to strong sets from The Nocturnal Affair and Hate. The buzz around the venue included a lot of excited speculation about one main topic – the appearance of Crystal Lake’s new vocalist Korean-born PK, formerly of Prompts.

There was to be no gentle introduction of the new guy to the crowd – the band launched immediately into a cacophony of weighty guitars, insistent drumming and impressive gutturals from PK. What followed was a short but perfectly formed set filled with cutting riffs, huge amounts of energy across the line-up, and a frontman with nothing to prove but seemingly determined to prove it anyway.

He threw himself around the stage before taking things a step further at one point by launching himself into the mosh pit. He wasn’t the sole star of the show though. The band behind him delivered a tightly coordinated performance that seemed impossible amongst the chaos occurring on stage.

Every tempo shift, every breakdown, every solo felt planned and deliberate. The set had a contemporary feel with the band spending most of their time between the seminal 2019 album ‘Helix’ and the latest album ‘The Weight of Sound’, the title track of which was a set highlight with the venue turning into a lake of light with phone torches. It was a well-curated playlist that rarely eased off and the crowd responded accordingly. If I absolutely had to find a negative, it would be in respect of the aforementioned tightness of the performance.

This can be, and to a large extent was, a positive to a gig but this felt almost too polished in parts which maybe diluted the rawness that you want from a live showing. But that is nitpicking. This was a thrilling set from band who ignored their billing as a support act and instead delivered a show worthy of headlining the venue. As the band wrapped up, the crowd had a brief but welcome opportunity to recover from the mayhem before the main event began.