LIVE REVIEWS incinerati festival
ELECTRIC BALLROOM/UNDERWORLD/BLACK HEART, Lond ON
Reduce d to a single day, but with its typical balance of extreme metal luminaries and ear-scouring up-andcomers still intact, the sixth Incineration Festival sees Camden awash with a sea of black shirts, many of which file into the Black Heart for first band of the day, SPHINX. With plenty of groove and bounce, the Londoners’ brand of tech-death provides a more-than-fitting wake-up call and, considering the event, Fire Keeper proves a very apt number. MECHANIZED DIRGE quickly follow and impress with a meaty, maggoty display of old-school violence complete with Death’s Suicide Machine as a cover.
Over at the Electric Ballroom, VOICES’ early start doesn’t deter the Incineration droves. The local lads’ pummelling yet progressive cinematic black metal, under the piercing flashes of light, intensely showcases their ability to capture elements of human suffering. DEITUS’s opening Underworld pitch sees the fellow Londoners ply a somewhat familiar line in scorched, occult-steeped black metal, stealing a fair few of Watain’s melodic hooks along the way. Hulking frontman A.G. looks as though he’s undergoing a personal diabolical absolution, but if his growl could use a bit more depth, that doesn’t deter a busy venue clearly wedded to their cause. The body count drops off significantly for Mexican two-piece TOMBSTONERS, however, but their drum battery and chaotic riffs like coils of barbed wire possessed by a demon stay true to the raw South American death metal style.
Featuring ex-members of The Defiled and Meta-Stasis, RED METHOD’s industrial, Slipknot-riveted death metal is as boisterous as the band’s performance. Even if the inclusion of a bargain bin-looking monster mask on their guitarist is bemusing, all six of them threaten to destroy the small Black Heart stage as Drogon-throated frontman Jeremy Gomez looms over the audience. “We haven’t been sober since Thursday!” guffaws frontman Franco ‘Lust’ Gonzales of LA metallers UNHOLY LUST, whose Venom worship is a disorderly, leather-clad load of raucous fun and makes it feel more like 3am than 3pm in The Underworld. His last name may rouse interest and open doors, but Richie Cavalera of INCITE deserves recognition as a seriously stellar frontman on his own merit, leading the grooving thrash metallers with wild-eyed energy as he flails himself across the stage and into the audience. Bassist Christopher Elsten’s Amy Winehouse t-shirt is a touching nod to the festival’s Camden location. Playing their first ever UK show, Italians ANTROPOFAGUS specialise in oldschool, brutal death metal, played with precision, if lacking a bit in personality. That’s not an issue with The Broo d frontman Iain Scott, his dry Northern wit proving the tinder for his skinpeeling vocals as the band’s palpitating grind wins over the Black Heart.
The Electric Ballroom is revelling in the grandiose fist-pumping bravado of English heritage society WINTERFYLLETH. Proud of spirit, the dense, cleaving sound soars and captivates as the whole room loses itself in the intricacies and atmospheres of ancient Albion. From jovial frontman to confrontational one, SHINING Sweden play a Halmstad- heavy set with enfant terrible Niklas Kvarforth full of piss and vinegar. Negativity and death grunts are belched with abandon as bandmembers are fondled and audience showered with scorn and bourbon in equal measures.
It’s a long-overdue return for CARPATHIAN FOREST and Nattefrost seems prone to keep bursting into Camden patron saint Amy Winehouse’s Rehab, giving a clue to past whereabouts. We get songs old, brand new, borrowed from The Cure and He’s Turning Blue. The punky Norske svart Mask Of The Slave with Kvarforth is double trouble and an evident crowd-pleaser.
Elaborately corpsepainted in the Carach Angren vein, Australia’s ADVENT SOROW prove one of the festival’s unexpected highlights. Their blending of epic, depressive black metal with the kind of furtive yet hallowed 80s goth perfected by first-generation Sisters Of Mercy is steeped in a humid, heart-wrenching atmosphere, the band determined to make their last breaths as rousing as possible.
Not that you’d know it during the majority of their set, but death metal institution BENEDICTION offer more cause for sorrow, this being frontman Dave Hunt’s last performance with the band on home soil after 20 years’ service. That announcement comes right at the end, but it doesn’t take away from the stagedive-launching celebration of filth-laden belligerence that precedes it. While most of the bands at Incineration reside in the dingiest corners of metal’s landscape, SEPTICFLESH’s slick, symphonic death metal pomp is a shinier proposition. They’re clearly not to everyone’s tastes, but the Ballroom is rammed, and they’re bombastically entertaining nonetheless.