LIVE REVIEW: Gaerea @ The Fleece, Bristol
Off the back of their breakout album Loss, mysterious Portuguese black metal act GAEREA land in Bristol’s legendary The Fleece for a night of intense and atmospheric sounds. With Midlands-based sludge and post-metal legends CONJURER along for the ride, GAEREA deliver a hard-hitting night of heavy misery.
While hardly a household name on the level of FOO FIGHTERS or OLIVIA RODRIGO, in their own little corner of the extreme metal world CONJURER are megastars. Playing ArcTanGent, Download and Damnation numerous times, releasing a split EP with post-hardcore darlings PALM READER and a collaborative album with PIJN as well as sharing stages with MAKE THEM SUFFER, BOTCH and GOJIRA, CONJURER have already made a huge mark on the metal underground.
Focusing mainly on tracks from their latest full-length Unself, the quartet open on All Apart, an unrelenting and devastatingly bleak blast of extreme metal then refuse to let the audience take a breath as they rip through close to an hour of intense riffs through tracks like Hollow and The Searing Glow. Dual vocalists and guitarists Dani Nightingale and Brady Deeprose tear through the set with throat-ripping screams, only slowing down for the surprisingly tender Let Us Live which sees Dani dedicate the track to the trans community with a heartfelt intro leading into anthemic choruses. Already on the precipice of becoming one of the UK’s most beloved extreme acts, CONJURER prove that they’re ready to go down in history as underground legends.
Rating: 8/10
Little is known about the cryptic band GAEREA, but a few facts can be pieced together about the black metal collective: they originated in Portugal, there are five members of the band, all of the members stay totally anonymous with occasional pseudonyms based around their mysterious ‘Vortex Society’ concept, and they’re one of the most fascinating heavy acts out there right now. With dates supporting IN FLAMES around Europe, the release of their acclaimed sixth album Loss and upcoming shows with DYING WISH and IMMINENCE coming up later this year, 2026 is surely the year of GAEREA.
While much of their earlier work sticks to the atmospheric black metal formula, the band’s new album Loss takes pointers from more mainstream heavy acts like POLARIS and SLEEP TOKEN (although it must be noted that GAEREA were doing the masked band thing for years before SLEEP TOKEN’s first album) with more accessible vocals and chugging guitars alongside their usual blastbeat-driven drums. This is especially clear in opening track Luminary which introduces the band’s masked frontman with an elaborate flourish, revealing more showmanship and sex appeal in the first few seconds of their set than most black metal bands can summon up in their entire career.
Blasting through sing-along hits like Nomad, Submerged and World Ablaze, the anonymous collective continue to find a comfortable middle ground between the worlds of bouncy modern metalcore and post-rock tinged black metal. Slowing things down to close out the set with Wilted Flower and the closer of their latest album Stardust, GAEREA leave the packed crowd gasping for more after a night of brutal riffs and enchanting melodies.
Rating: 7/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Bristol from Rowan Bruce here:
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