Hooded Menace

WITCHSORROW/ COLTSBLOOD

THE BLACK HEART, LONDON

The Black Heart is buzzing. Literally. As Liverpool’s

play, the outside of the venue is vibrating under the assault. This is slow-motion doom filtered though lo-fi black metal and played at a volume illegal in half of Europe. Culling half their set from career-high new album Hexenhammer,

WITCHSORROW [8] feature tarpit guitars and a lump hammer to the midriff rhythm section as they dole out Sabbathian doom with DNA traces of Cathedral and Saint Vitus. Demons Of The Mind is both catchy and skull-smashingly heavy and God Curse Us may well be a tribute to South West Trains. Finnish death doomsters HOODED

MENACE [9] look to the early days of Amorphis, as well as the Dewsbury gothic of early Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride. They don’t lack heaviness but also have the knack for the bleak windswept moor-evoking harmonies and downbeat melodies of the early 90s. A gloriously miserable and a epically dour experience.