Destroyed Beyond Belief are a local band opening
up tonight proceedings. They are all out there
and it’s a bit of a mess to be honest with
you; front man doesn’t really know what
to say, there’s no chemistry on stage and
the drum beats are quite simplistic and dull.
They do give it their best but it seems that possibly
nerves and technical difficulties may have defeated
them tonight. Music wise the clean vocals are
not the best and the lyrics don’t really
flow with the music. If they sort a few bugs out
and gain some stage presence then hopefully next
time I’ll have something a bit more exciting
and generally give praise to them with any luck.
Collision Process follows tonight with a progressive
rock sound which I have a little soft spot in
my heart for. Their take on the whole progressive
rock is a lot more aggressive and fast paced like
Opeth mixed around with the faster paced side
of Tool. Very aggressive screaming vocals with
a bouncy atmosphere; they manage to have an even
balance of aggression and mellow sounds in their
songs which is a great feature in progressive
metal, they also have no fear of silence as between
songs their front man projects his voice loud
for all to hear and tries to get some reaction
from the audience with some humour and it pays
off for them extremely well. The local scene isn’t
dying yet it bands like this keep emerging they
definitely restore the faith.
Romeo Must Die smash though the dull rows of zombies
lay before them and light a fire under the crowds
ass. For most of the night the crowd has been
quite stationary but these guys do not take kindly
to unresponsive audiences. They were the same
when I last saw them in 2008 on the Sanctity tour
the singer gets on the barrier and leans over
all the crowd and gets them singing with him asks
for something and will not stop until he gets
it. A pit breaks out and people are bouncing;
people at the back still don’t get involved
so they get spat on by the vocalist. They whole
band are built like absolute fucking beasts and
really get into what they’re doing. Confidence
on a whole new level which you really have to
respect as it all adds to the rock and roll show,
they’ve left a lasting impression with this
crowd and you can tell as people who tried to
ignore them at the beginning of their set are
now head banging away and jumping along. Playing
mostly songs from their new album “Hardships
in Season” which was given away for free
with metal hammer and the self titled track of
their debut album “Defined by Enemies”
they really mix it up and show what they’ve
got; hope it doesn’t take another 2 years
for them to get back up here I definitely wouldn’t
turn down seeing them again.
The Defiled obliterate everything. They come on
to the thunderous anthem “In the Land of
Fools” its instantly clear everybody came
here for The Defiled with the screaming girls
and people losing their minds. The key to their
success at a live show is how playful they are
and the image that is inspired by their attitude;
their image is a very gothic nature, creepy and
horror inspired and they act in a way that matches
their image and sound. Especially AvD the keyboardist
who is an absolute nut job but I really dig it,
on stage it looks as though he has mental problems
with all the faces he pulls and the way he smashes
that keyboard around; then you’ve got Stitch
D who is still too cool for his own good, him
and AvD together have a terrific sense of humour
and play off each other to keep the show flowing.
They only play around 8 songs so it’s a
relatively short set but they crack out “Metropolis”,
“The Resurrectionists”, “Blood
Sells”, “Call To Arms”, their
EP title track “1888” and their last
song was a request from my friend Josh “Red
tape”. Great atmosphere and a good turnout
for the band on a headline show and they continue
to be a terrific band, people have been saying
they have fears of them changing their sound to
become more mainstream but I really don’t
see that happening.
Destroyed Beyond Belief – 2/5
Colision Process – 4/5
Romeo Must Die – 5/5
The Defiled – 5/5
Review By James Webb
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