LIVE REVIEW: Jonathan Davis @ Club Academy, Manchester

Each year, the start of festival season usually tends to prove exciting for metal fans, not only because of huge marquee events like Download Festival that’re always packed to the brim with massive acts, but also because said bands will often take to performing various warm-up shows in a variety of venues far more intimate than their usual fare. One such individual taking this approach in 2018 whilst touring in support of his excellent solo album Black Labyrinth is JONATHAN DAVIS, frontman of legendary nu-metallers KORN, who we were lucky enough to catch at a sold-out hugely intimate solo show at Manchester’s Club Academy just days prior to him hitting the far more high-profile heights of Download Festival’s second stage.

The somewhat monumental task of opening up the show tonight falls to Liverpool four-piece DEATH BLOOMS, who seem to take to the stage as somewhat of an unknown quantity for much of the assembled audience. Trading mostly in a well-oiled balance of throat-eviscerating guttural screams and soaring cleans set atop a bedrock of chunky nu-metal grooves, the quartet put on a rather strong showing across their set, displaying a frantic kinetic energy as they blast through their canon of metalcore-tinged anthems and attempt to set the stage for what’s to come. Sadly, a large chunk of the crowd seem utterly apathetic to what’s going on in front of them, and the band really have to fight to command attention as they run through a set that’s ultimately impactful in tone, yet feels far too underappreciated by some. Frontman Paul Barrow more than proves himself a capable ringleader for the ones that do care nonetheless though, and he and his DEATH BLOOMS bandmates can leave tonight having put on a strong opener and having impressed at least a sizeable chunk of their viewers by the time all’s said and done.

Rating: 7/10

It has to be said, there’s something inherently unsettling about seeing JONATHAN DAVIS take to a stage, not only one this small, but also armed with a simple black replacement in lieu of his trademark H.R. Giger-designed microphone stand. That said, tonight is entirely about his activities outside of his main band, and the strangeness quickly subsides as he and his backing band launch into opener Underneath My Skin. With said band tonight being comprised of KORN drummer Ray Luzier alongside several others including a guitarist and keyboard player, you’d be forgiven for thinking this might be a rather straightforward affair, until you get to the fact there’s a second guitarist who also plays electric violin, and they’ve eschewed having a bass guitarist in favour of a far less traditional upright double-bass. What this means in reality is a far more cinematic feel to the likes of recent material like Basic Needs and Final Days, as the more avant-garde elements of said songs are able to be retained in an incredibly faithful manner.

Across his performance, JONATHAN DAVIS throws in almost the entirety of Black Labyrinth (skipping over only The Secret and Gender), plus three massively well-received cuts from the soundtrack he wrote for 2002 horror film Queen of the Damned, but was unable to personally perform on at the time. Really, it’s these tracks that end up mostly being the highlights of the performance, but there’s more than enough that’s interesting in newer songs like Your God and Please Tell Me to keep momentum going across the whole performance. Saying very little to the audience in his time onstage, aside from a few grateful remarks, Davis instead lets his music do the talking, resulting in a set that runs the gamut of both his emotional range and his solo catalogue, even going as far as throwing in a fully-left-field main set closer of NEIL DIAMOND’s Love On The Rocks. The only true downside of the entire evening in fact, is its relative brevity – including encoring with two final salvos of heavy in the form of What It Is and Happiness, Davis and his band are in and out again within a little over an hour or so, a time which absolutely flies by, despite them having run through an entire 16-song set. Either way, the sheer brilliant novelty of having seen one of modern metal’s most iconic frontmen perform in what essentially amounts to a tiny basement can’t be stated enough, and there’s barely a person in the house who doesn’t appear to be leaving with a massive smile on their face. Shows like this don’t come around all too often, but when they do, evenings like this can’t help but feel special.

Rating: 8/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Manchester from Sabrina Ramdoyal Photography here: