Stormruler began the evenings with with so much energy and passion. Showing why live black metal should bring chaotic and furious energy live. Bringing a sound that is both hard hitting but equally reminiscent of melodic black metal bands of yesteryear such as Dissection. Bringing moments of atmosphere juxtaposed with moments of uptempo fury. We have played Stormruler on our radio show many times and it was an absolute treat to hear these black metal upstarts bringing some melodic black metal fury to Manchester!
Ingested were a total surprise, a band that I had ashamedly slept on before this show. This homecoming show for the Manchester death metal trio was EXPLOSIVE. Vocalist Jason Evans had the audience in the palm of his hand, demanding ” I want a circle pit here , and here, multiple circle pits” and his desires were met by a rabid audience. Clearly their home audience was enthusiastic to see the return of their “Slam Kings”. For anybody looking for a brutal death metal band that can whip a crowd into a frenzy, you could do far worse than Manchesters Ingested.
Dark Funeral were – it pains me to say – just a bit boring live. Black Metal is my personal favourite subgenera of metal so you would think that seeing a huge established artist of that genre would be the highlight of my evening, it was not the case. They relied more on vaudeville props and costuming than musicality and stage presence and this fell very flat for me. With more exciting, newer Black Metal acts emerging (Stormruler being one ) it was just a bit deflating seeing such a lacklustre performance from one of the genres most established acts.
Finally we come to the headliner, the mighty Cannibal Coprse who at this point just perform like a well oiled machine. Even from the humorous back and forth with the audience to the performance itself differs very little from the first time I saw them back in 2010. I do not mean this as a criticism, the crowd knew every one liner from “This is a song for the ladies” heralding the song ‘Fucked with a Knife’ to “this is a song about shooting blood from your cock!” which would inevitably be proceeded by the bands classic song “I cum Blood”. Fans know what they are getting when they buy tickets for a Cannibal Corpse gig and they receive it! A musically tight performance by arguably the largest Death Metal band in the world filled with equal parts horror and humour. Cannibal Corpse did not disappoint and a fun, brutal evening was had by all.
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