Marduk/Immolation/De Profundis/Forgotten World – London Camden Underworld – Saturday 29 September 2012
Review by Gary Lukes
Photos by Antony Roberts
American death metal titans Immolation and Sweden’s very own black metal warmongers Marduk; two perfect paragons of scorching sacrilege over the last couple of decades. Seemingly a world apart, brought together in The Underworld. Surely a match made in hell?
But first, the support, and a late arrival meant missing Dead Beyond Buried. France’s Forgotten World are a curious case, drenched in corpse paint, they look as grim as Satan’s testicles. Yet, close your eyes and you are left with a melodeath band with a disturbing propensity for core-ish leanings. But what they do, they do very well. And although they managed to inspire some slight crowd movement, the guitarist’s calls for a circle-pit seemed more than a little hopeful.
(Ed’s note – unfortunately we had to head out to meet friends and only caught the last half song from De Profundis, hence no review of their set). Commencing with the gargantuan churn of “Close to a World Below”, Immolation are a machine; honed by almost a quarter of a century treading the boards. It’s a testament to their legacy that the hatchet-hued riffing of the newer “Majesty and Decay” and the huge groaning groove of “What They Bring” trample just hard as the eddying claustrophobia created by “Into the Everlasting Fire”, a track conceived almost twenty years prior. Promising to mark their upcoming twenty-fifth anniversary with their “darkest shit yet“ the band respond to the constant crowd-calls with a furious “No Jesus, No Beast”. Immolation’s roar is unrelenting, the rumble and groove almost inhuman; like a death metal Godflesh seeping that typical New York sense of dynamics from every pore. Right up there with their performance at London Deathfest X, the band were apparently “excited as hell to be here”. And the love is requited in enthusiastic form; hundreds of devil horns thrust defiantly to the heavens.
Marduk gather their congregation before them; Mortuus commanding the pulpit and spitting rancorous pieties onto the faithful below during a venomous “Serpent Sermon”. Another act whose blasphemies remain unblunted by time, the Swedish horde coil through the spiralling riffs of “Nowhere, No-one, Nothing” and the lurching groove of “Levelling Dust” before regressing into the necrotic swagger of oldies “On Darkened Wings” and a ripping “Slay the Nazarene”. From the swirling maelstrom of “Throne of Rats” to the rabid riffs in “Baptism by Fire”, the baying death metal masses seem just as engaged by the blizzard of cold Scandinavian riffing; which is a victory in itself. Steamrolled for good measure by “Panzer Division Marduk”, any remains are ground into dust during an encore of “With Satan and Victorious Weapons” and “Wolves”. Christ-raping black metal at its most efficient.
Leave A Comment