LIVE REVIEW: Yob @ The Fleece, Bristol

With the summer well and truly behind us, this is officially Gig Season; the bands coming through the UK are doing so at a fair rate of knots and this will only continue for the rest of 2018 and beyond. Tonight it’s the turn of doom metallers YOB, beginning their tour of the country at the hallowed The Fleece in Bristol and promptly getting stuck in traffic from Belgium, thus forcing a thirty minute delay to doors and the show – thankfully, everything is amended swiftly and runs within schedule, thus avoiding several bleary eyes on the Monday morning commute.

As for the gig itself, any band that comprises members of OATHBREAKER and AMENRA is not going to be awful, thereby giving openers WIEGEDOOD a solid foundation on which to build. Unsurprisingly therefore, over the next forty-five minutes they construct the darkest of castles with their black metal and besiege all concerned with the most brutal of audial assaults. Bathed entirely in red light, the trio are unrelenting in their delivery with only a poor vocal mix for opening number Svanesang stifling an otherwise excellent set. From there, every song seems to be more pulverising and evil than the last, with De Doden Hebben Het Goed III and closing number Prowl  both exceptional highlights. With three albums under their belt, they’re already making waves in the extreme metal scene and this tour will do much to raise that profile even more.

Rating: 8/10

There is a moment, perhaps two thirds of the way through YOB’s set, where frontman Mike Scheidt plays four clean chords with neither bassist Aaron Reiseberg or drummer Travis Foster touching their respective instruments. In between the strums, a pin dropping would sound like an atomic bomb exploding, such is the level of silence from an audience entirely captivated by three seasoned musicians doing what they do best. Tonight, YOB give The Fleece a true masterclass in sound, structure, composition and appreciation from the first note to the last, proving exactly why they’ve been held in such high regard for so many years. Half a dozen songs in the space of an hour and a quarter really isn’t a lot, but the journey that YOB take everyone on from Ablaze onwards is such that any less would have been too short and any more the exact opposite.

There’s a lot of hair going everywhere too, not just from the stage but also from the floor with each bar of music accompanied by a sea of synchronised headbanging, especially during The Screen which has a riff the size of a giraffe on top of a mammoth. Mind you, there’s nothing small about any part of YOB’s sound tonight which is so colossal you could stick it at the port to Rhodes and it would be an Ancient Wonder of the World. They don’t bother going off and coming back on for an encore, instead bulldozing their way through the fabulous Burning the Altar to culminate a triumphant set in the best way possible. The temperature might be dropping outside, but the fire inside YOB still burns brightly as they approach their 25th anniversary as a band.

Rating: 9/10

Check out our photo gallery from the night’s action in Bristol from Anthony Cook Photography here: