By Jase Walker
A show legitimately almost two years in the making, The Human Veil’s release show for their EP, ‘The Hybrid Era’ is finally here and ready to kick off in Manchester’s infamous Satan’s Hollow club venue. Bringing along an ensemble in the form of Asleep At The Helm, Cut Short and Lunar Process, tonight’s Sunday show is going to be one sending me into work tomorrow with ringing in my ears.
It’s 7pm and Asleep At The Helm take their positions on stage, the room steadily filling up and looking to be a solid turnout for a Sunday night! The atmospheric intro completely misdirects the immediate heavy shit that followed right after, the chorus being another shift in gears. Quite similar to how bands like Oceans Ate Alaska shift between verses that are filled with chunky riffs and gutturals and catchy pop choruses, yeah, this is very much my bread and butter right here!
Man, I do love it when you’ve got a catchy hook that gets followed up with a breakdown that’s just rock bottom heavy, the shifting gears between both facets of what these guys are playing seems effortless and natural and they’re clearly enjoying smashing it up on stage. A smashing example of UKs Metalcore scene and hopefully someone I’ll see again!
Second tonight is Cut Short opening with the brightest lights I have ever seen at a show here. These guys seem to be erring a bit more on the side of hardcore when compared to the previous band! Still in keeping with the massive chorus style of writing but the verses are definitely more straight pounding and heavy, admittedly I’m not quite as keen on the overall sound but I’d be lying if I said they didn’t sound bloody massive.
They’ve got some solid attention from the audience as a whole and I can see The Human Veil guys off to one side bouncing away to them playing. Cut Short put on a solid display, they’re definitely good at what they do but it doesn’t appeal to me.
After some interesting sounding vocal checks, The Lunar Process are ready to begin with a swelling synth intro, leading into a.. slipknot type riff? Mixed in with proper deathcore style vocals, jumping between gutturals and shrill uncleans, an interesting mix to say the least! I did think with a name like theirs, this would be a bit more on the proggy side but not quite!
These guys are kicking out some bloody tasty guitar work like, it’s let down a bit by the lack of live bass player mind, but not by much. The songs are filled with busy riffs with intense melodies, yet still solidly heavy, fronted with the singers variety of uncleans, oddly it all reminds me a bit of earlier In Flames, of course mixed in with a good helping of contemporary metalcore influences. Solid show from these lads.
A slight delay following some technical issues, The Human Veil are ready to start to a fairly busy Satan’s Hollow, they’ve done well to get this amount of people here on a Sunday night especially with other metal events happening nearby! It’s been a pretty solid length of time since they’ve been able to play due to pandemic issues but they’re back and tearing it up.
The new tracks from ‘The Hybrid Era’ are sounding massive, and most notably how good their singer, Matt, is sounding in these songs pulling double duty jumping between cleans and growls backed up by the riffage and thunderous rhythm from the rest of the band. With how tight this performance is, you can see why they’re well respected in Manchester’s metal scene.
Even the older songs from ‘Fractures’ are sounding incredible, it’s hard to sound good in a venue like Satan’s because of its circular stage in the middle of the room but man, the sound is fat and the vocals cut through it all like butter – solid kudos to whoever’s doing sound here! Not only this but we’ve got a guest vocal spot from Blind Summit’s singer, Alex, I wasn’t expecting that! What an amazing surprise!
On the whole, every band put in a great performance, and topping it off with The Human Veil has made a fantastic Sunday night. Those years without any live shows have been put to good use and they’ve honed their craft and you can see and hear it through this show.
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