Words and pictures by The Dark Queen
I stroll through the dark cold streets of Belfast, heading into the ‘Vendetta’ of the purge to come and arrive at Love & Death to all ready filling venue for such an early show.
Gravepath blast the early crowd with their ‘Negative’ heavy, sludgy down-tuned riffs and the already filling room is totally engulfed by the music. As they belt through their set ‘Judas’s’ drum kick brings your heartbeat into sync with the rhythm, only to be ‘Bludgeoned’, until the quieter guitar brings in a rather hypnotic trance-like feel to this song and the crowd sway along to it before it blasts right back at you.
Spirit Ruiner let the slow heartbeat sounding bass of ‘Spirit Ruiner’ grab the crowd by the vibrations of the doom. As a two piece, they have the full sound they need to grab an audience. Jordy’s vocals are hoarse and rough, with that full on doom quality; but, as they are ‘Falling Through The Smoke’, Jamie’s bass falls out completely – just a sign of tech diffs ongoing throughout the event! However, as two guys who really do not want to disappoint the audience, they carry on a play as best as they can to finish their set. Yes, I have seen this band before and heard them play better but to be honest, in the circumstances, they played a blinder set.
Again the tech diffs delay the next band, Words That Burn, by at least 20 minutes – and when they are finally able to start their set it is obvious that there are still problems, when Roni has to hunker down and put his ear to the wedge just to hear himself, before grabbing one the other mics… but, again, the band played on. Due to all the problems they only get to play four songs, but they played with such energy and passion they totally made it up to crowd; but, to be honest, I felt so sorry them.
Cursed Sun, full of energy and maybe a bit of trepidation about showcasing their new material, take to the non-stage (there was no stage – they set up on the floor), masked up and hidden for the purge with a full throttle, in your face bombardment of riffs, drums a growls. The energy from the guys is infectious and they automatically have the crowd by the balls. I have to say that the gliiterball sending glowy sparkling lighting all over everyone was quite an interesting effect, lol.
’Fallen City’, the first track, from their new EP, lead us straight into ‘Psychopath’ and the crowd go wild. ‘Bleeding From Bleeding’ just brings on a ‘Primordial Chaos’; but, the ‘Cataclysmic Decline’ brings us to Gojira’s ‘Silvera’ (unusual for CS, as they normally cover Lamb Of God): after a great cover, Jones tells the crowd “now we play the full Gojira album” (I can’t help laugh heartily). ‘The Seven’ takes us straight into the last part of the new EP, as ‘Replicant’, ‘Crawlspace’ and ‘MDK 187‘ lead Jones to literally climb into the rafters of this venue – and I mean literally – while ‘MDK’ has the masks in abundance all through the crowd.
To sum up, this was and wasn’t the night I was expecting. On the plus each and every band played their hearts out, despite the problems, but the sound guy worked his wee ass off trying to fix everything that went wrong. It was just one of those nights when there were problems, but it was also of those when it was just a great night, and everyone involved just got on with it and made it a great night.
- PHOTO CREDIT: All photos © The Dark Queen/Über Rock. You can see our full gallery of photographs HERE.
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