LIVE REVIEW: Inverloch, Indesinence, Necro Deathmort, London Camden Underworld, Thursday 19th April 2012

//LIVE REVIEW: Inverloch, Indesinence, Necro Deathmort, London Camden Underworld, Thursday 19th April 2012

 

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

Inverloch/Indesinence/Necro Deathmort – London Camden Underworld – Thursday 19th April 2012

 

By Gary Lukes

Photos by Antony Roberts

Ed’s note: If you follow us on facebook (and if you don’t why not!? www.facebook.com/metalgigs) you’ll be aware we’ve had some computer issues and have a fair amount of slightly old gig reviews to get up.  Between failed hard drives, failed BIOS updates and orange juice spillages, we’re starting to work through the backlog and should have a bunch of review coming in the next week or two.  We’d like to apologise to all the promoters for the delays. Here’s Gary Lukes review of the storming Disembowelment gig from a few weeks ago:

 

Thursday’s aren’t the most metal of days, and tonight London sadly seems more interested in the latest episode of Watchdog than the resurrection of Australian doom legends Disembowelment. Thus, we are greeted into the murky belly of Camden’s Underworld by the sight of Necro Deathmort summoning their spacey, sinister electro-doom in front of a measly crowd of about twenty people. 

 

And it’s a shame, as AJ Cookson and Matthew Rozeik utilise the unusual guitar/laptop (and occasional bass) set-up to conjure an insidious sound that seethes under the sparse lighting; constantly shifting shape in the shadows and somehow emerging more malevolent than before. 

 

At times, they can recall Aphex Twin at their most deranged or Axis of Perdition at their most lucid, while the band’s sound as a whole seems to consist of a unique legion of influences that echo genre-freaks as varied as Lustmord, Blut aus Nord and Massive Attack. On tracks such as “Temple of Juno”, dark dubby beats mutate and melt into ethereal effects, off-kilter guitar-lines and menacing screams. 

 

So while a disturbingly large amount of the British population are safely cocooned on their sofas in front of Emmerdale, it’s easy to take some form of morbid pleasure that a few hardy souls would trade their warm frontroom for the beer stained floorboards of The Underworld. The very same boards that shake and shudder under the doomed, decaying thud of “The Heat Death of Everything” and the band so malefic, death named them thrice.

 dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

 

“Some people might know us; we are Indesinence from Sweden.” greets front-man Ilia Rodrigeuz halfway through his set. “This is a song about fading further into the Beyond. It’s called… Fading Further Beyond.” And with that succinct intro, UK (/pseudo-Swedish) death-doomsters Indesinence proceed to constrict and collapse skulls with a pummelling showcase from their forthcoming album. 

 

If Indesinence share any immediate, palpable trait with tonight‘s headliners, it‘s their ability to meld the key components of both doom and death metal without diluting either element. Combining the crushing melancholy of prime My Dying Bride with a rhythmic death metal stomp rarely heard outside of a Bolt Thrower album. Deservedly signed to Profound Lore records, their future is bright; if not irrevocably doomed.

 dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

 

Apparently, they say you should never go back. They say that’s it’s better to move onto pastures new and let former glories fade proudly over the horizon. After all, you’ve only got to see just how Black Sabbath’s internal bickering and the self-imposed exile of Bill Ward have split their faithful following. Or how Axl Rose not only shat upon his legacy, but prolapsed spectacularly with “Chinese Democracy”. Of course, what “they” would be omitting to mention is that Sleep, Goatsnake and Thorr’s Hammer have already readily disproved this theory to pretty devastating effect in recent years. 

 

And now it’s Inverloch’s opportunity to prove them wrong. Although technically a new band, the core sound of the artist formally known as d.USK is still essentially an amalgam of past projects Disembowelment and Trial of the Bow. The former’s strength was always their unique ability to combine the suffocating and sluggish crawl of funeral doom with ear-bleeding, intense death-grind attacks. And all early signs seem to indicate that Inverloch have grasped this template and added an undeniable maturity to their song writing. 

 

Commencing under a thick, familiar barrage of double bass and churning guitar, the band faithfully reanimate the damned, exiled carcass of “The Tree of Life and Death“. It’s a song that loses nothing in the transition from record, let alone the test of years. And if anything, the intimate confines of The Underworld only serves to make the crushing dirge feel even more claustrophobic than ever before. Disembowelment originals Paul Mazziotta and Matthew Skarajew show no sign of aging behind their instruments, while new vocalist Ben James’ sickened growls seep through the murk in eerily familiar fashion.

 

The restrained opening of old favourite “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory“, follows, giving way to discordant guitar and screeched vocals that stretch across voids. Inverloch’s newest members do a stellar job of replicating the original’s often obtuse and off-kilter rhythms as the song sways into a sea-sick rhythm.

 

But this isn’t all about nostalgia. Inverloch have an EP to promote, and it’s one worth making noise about. “Within Frozen Beauty” opens with slow, plucked notes and then erupts into relentless death metal. Stuttering riffs fall into massive cascading doom chords, proving “Transcending the Peripheral” was no fluke and the passing years under the Melbourne sun have had far from a mellowing affect. 

 

While the majority of the set is culled from Disembowelment’s solitary full length, stellar Inverloch tracks such as “The Menin Road” stand firm alongside classic monoliths such as “The Spirits of the Tall Hills”. The former’s lumbering, distinctive riffing almost channelling the funereal atmospheric of Esoteric. It’s appreciated by the audience, having slowly grown in numbers to fill out the front half of the venue. And after repeated calls from the crowd, the band close their set with the frantic grind of “Excoriate“; which drops into a sickening crawl before boiling back into bedlam.

 

Any lingering doubts over the legitimacy to Inverloch’s emergence should have been put to bed after their epic set at this year’s Roadburn festival. If anything, tonight’s performance actually bettered it. Behind clenched eyes, it could have been the very ghost of Disembowelment treading the stage. But to write Inverloch off as a covers band would be to do them a massive disservice. 

 

Disembowelment’s debut album is quite rightly revered as an all-time classic. But Inverloch are a behemoth in their own right and there’s enough promise on “Dusk | Subside“ to suggest the band will thrive. Hopefully the same can be said of the crowd turn-out the next time London’s fortunate enough to be graced by their presence.

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

dusk disembowelment inverloch indesinence necro deathmort london camden underworld gig listings metal gigs

By |2012-05-18T00:00:00+00:00May 18th, 2012|Gig Reviews|0 Comments

About the Author:

Leave A Comment