Review by Liam Barlow - Photos by Sheri Bicheno
You would think that four bands who had been on the road for seven weeks, playing 38 shows and travelling through god knows how many countries, would show a bit of fatigue or tiredness on stage….
You would also be very wrong when making that assumption on this show.
Opening proceedings were Storm Ruler, now I must admit that I hadn’t heard of this band before coming this gig, and I also must admit that I didn’t listen to them before hand either, which was a mistake.
Blending a lovely mashup of Blackened Thrash , with the glam dress up of leather jackets, sunglasses, arm pads and the works, we were treated to hard and heavy riffs, accompanied by some technical guitar solos and vocals which no one could have told they had been on the road for 45 days.
The crowd warmed very quickly to the band, even though they were the “softest” act on the night, I have to say that in inverted comas, because they were in no way shape or form soft…. But compared to the next band up, they looked like teddy bears….
Ingested came on and just engulfed the room in pure chaotic energy straight from the start. The boys from “Slamchester” walked on stage and the pit was already open with people going mad from the first note.
I saw Ingested in a tiny room at an old Nottingham venue called “The Maze” in 2018, and to see them go from that to a capacity Rock City in 5 short years, is just full credit to how hard this band work, and how much they mean business.
We saw a wall of death, circle pits, people throwing down and a sea of crowd surfers throughout the set, as tracks like No Half Measures, Shadows in Time and my personal favourite, Invidious alongside others destroyed the collective faces of everyone stood in that room.
Its no surprise that these are about to embark on a full US headline run, before returning to play Download Festival for the first time in the bands career.
Next up were Swedish Black Metallers, Dark Funeral.
When I first saw that these were in between Ingested and Cannibal Corpse, I thought surely it would make more sense from the looking of the energy of the crowd, for Ingested to be main support (with absoloutley no disrespect to the reputation of Dark Funeral, this was purely just my outlook) but then they came on, and the demonic riffs began, and the blast beats and technicalities of one of the best live drummers I've ever had the privilege of watching rang through the dark walls of Rock City, and all previous thoughts shot out my head.
The boys don’t mess around live, donning their stage attire and belting through huge tracks such as The Arrival of Satans Empire, Nail Them To The Cross and Where The Shadows Forever Reign.
There was one track which really stood out to me because of how beautiful it was... (yeah I know, what am I on about, a black metal band performing a beautiful song… BUT IT WAS.)
When I'm Gone has lived rent free in my head since they performed it, and I've listened to it on repeat a few times, its atmospherics and deepness, and how perfectly it was performed just completely blew me away.
But enough of the soppy S**t…. Their backdrop had been lurking in the background for the whole gig, and now it was lit up, Cannibal Corpse had entered the building!
Opening with one of the hardest crushing riffs in metal, Scourge Of Iron, one of, if not THE Godfathers of Death Metal straight away turned a sea of heads to a sea of simultaneous head banging, which was awesome to see.
We were treated to what I can only grasp as a greatest hits set, they didn’t perform a track I didn’t expect, and it was bloody magnificent.
This was (shamefully) the first time I had ever seen Corpsegrinder and the boys live, and I was in my element from the first to the last moment.
18 tracks of pure unadulterated, face quenching, insanity.
Tracks like Inhumane Harvest, the infamous I Cum Blood, and Death Walking Terror all lead to the finale of Hammer Smashed Face, although Corpsegrinder did try and throw us off the scent fully confirming that the previous track was the last song, no matter how much the audience wanted more...
But we got the big finale!
A true highlight of the whole set was the poor lad who kept trying to show the band a shoe (whether it was his shoe or not will always be a mystery) but Mr Grinder, or Sir Grinder as he should be known, kept taking the mick out of him, ultimately though it turned out alright for the the lad, getting given a setlist from the man himself, so I would have taken that abuse any day of the week!
All in all, an absolute killer evening, and going back to the first point I made in this review, I had to keep remembering that all 4 of these bands had been on the road, FOR SEVEN WEEKS… Props to each and every one of them!
INTERVIEWS WITH INGESTED AND DARK FUNERAL WILL SOON FOLLOW!
Photography by Sheri Bicheno. See below Slideshow!
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