LIVE REVIEW: Undeath @ The Black Heart, London
There are few bands within the burgeoning revival of old-school death metal who have been so roundly adored and acclaimed as Rochester’s UNDEATH. With not one but two killer full-lengths to their name at this point, their arrival in the UK – which also marks their first overseas tour – feels long overdue. Tonight, a sold out Black Heart in Camden confirms exactly that as the band mark the penultimate date in a week-long run of shows on which like-minded revivalists CELESTIAL SANCTUARY have ensured that British death metal gets some excellent representation of its own.
First up for this specific date are London-based newcomers MUTAGENIC HOST, a band whose debut release The Genatoxic Demo is just weeks old. Bathed in red light, they give all four tracks plus the intro of that killer 15-minute record a swift and crushing run out here. The set is over before it’s even really begun, but the five-piece have no trouble at all in getting a reasonably full room of heads banging as they channel their hulking grooves through a jagged, imposing wall of ENTOMBED-esque guitars.
Rating: 8/10
If MUTAGENIC HOST are one of the newest additions to the British death metal scene, then CELESTIAL SANCTUARY are undoubtedly its leading light. Taking to the stage to TENPOLE TUDOR’s Swords Of A Thousand Men of all things, the Cambridge-based sluggers soon launch with full force into their 2021 album opener Rid The Gormless. The musicianship is tight from the off, with guitarist/vocalist Thomas Cronin cutting a commanding presence as he demands – and gets – a wall of death in the very first song.
The crowd remain lively from there, particularly as Cronin implores them to “do some irreparable damage to your necks” as he introduces third track Suffer Your Sentience, also from that excellent debut full-length. Both tracks from the band’s Mass Extinction demo get an outing too, and there’s even a new song which Cronin gleefully tells us is “about eating so much of your own sick that your stomach blows up and kills everyone.” As a vocalist, Cronin is particularly impressive, his rapturous boom never drowned out by the maelstrom behind him even as drummer James Burke’s double kicks come thundering right through the tightly-packed bodies.
The band wrap things up with Trapped Within The Rank Membrane from last year’s Absolute Convergence split EP – a bleak and lengthy number replete with all manner of wild pinch harmonics – and Cronin definitely puts it best when he concludes “if you hadn’t heard, this is the New Wave of British Death Metal.”
Rating: 9/10
“Come forward, your king decrees it”, smiles UNDEATH vocalist Alex Jones, bedecked as he is with a glorious plastic crown as the band ready themselves for the main event. Upon the crowd’s compliance, the Americans tear forcefully into the title track from last year’s absolutely massive It’s Time…To Rise From The Grave LP. There’s an instantly arresting charisma to the band’s performance, and most of it comes from Jones himself. You can tell the frontman is having a great time, his furious growls balanced out by exactly the sense of fun you need to pull off songs with titles like Fiend For Corpses and Chained To A Reeking Rotted Body.
Both of the band’s full-lengths get fair representation, as does their 2019 EP Sentient Autolysis in the form of Enhancing The Dead and Grave Osmosis, and there’s even room for a new one titled Brandish The Blade. All of it is received rapturously, with a packed room doing all it can to satisfy Jones’ exhortations to get “more bodies in the fucking air” – although the frontman himself does prove to be the evening’s best and busiest crowd surfer.
It’s also even clearer in a live setting that UNDEATH aren’t the knuckle-dragging caveman that perhaps a cursory listen to their music or glance at their lyrics might have you believe. Their songs wind, riff, thrash and groove their way all over the place, and crucially the band nail every twist and turn. They end with the flex of flexes too – an encore of the very same song they opened with. This is a band who hold nothing back, and as the song incites an even more incendiary reaction a second time round there is absolutely no doubt that UNDEATH will be welcomed back in the UK as soon and as often as they can return.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in London from Anne Pfalzgraf here:
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