Stick to your Guns fire out of the blocks with all guns blearing in this searing show of Killswitch Engage- tinged, rhythm section-dominated hardcore. Setting aside the fairly generic vocals style, featuring the much loved Atreyu-type vocal harmonies, STYG are tight, and prove to be a great start in what should be a monumental display of modern hardcore.

Second to take the stage, Animosity (9) are beautifully decadent and are totally proud of the carnage going on in front of vocalist Leo Miller and his bone scraping, A Life Once Lost type assault. Accompanied by a ceiling crumbling blast beat, and a brain haemorrhaging 6-stringed attack, Animosity prove their worth, pretty much sealing their place in the death-core scene.
If dulcet vocals weren’t a factor, Cataract would be a heavy hitter for metal-cores most mainstream market. This is a band that have found their sound and give them a year or two and you’ll be seeing them higher up the bill everywhere. They have the image, they have the sound, and they have the attitude; and you can tell that they’re revelling and really enjoying the response that they are receiving tonight.    

Just listening to the blistering speeds at which All Shall Perish’s (9) two axemen shred effortlessly through their warm up during the soundcheck; it’s easy to see that the talent is there. When the band fire out of the blocks, you can’t help but notice that the 3 guitarists look far, far, FAR too modest to be destroying the fret-board so monstrously. Whatever they describe themselves as, theres no doubt that with performances like this, they are now at the forefront of it. If you hadn’t taken any notice of ASP to date, you really have no choice in the matter now.

If you hadn’t seen The Red Chord live before, you would assume that the band consisted to balls-to-the-wall hardcore types who like to kick small-cuddly things off viaducts, but just looking at these guys really does seem the very contrary. Their set is free-flowing, brutal and exciting, all in equal dose but Guy’s cheeky smile inject a very human quality and  bassist’s Greg’s cheesy-porn movie style ‘tashe twitches with glee every now and again. This is a band that work together with a harmony that not many ever achieve; the crowd go berserk, but merely just echoing the energy coming off the stage.

Coming off the back of the release of their latest album ‘The American Dream,’ Walls of Jericho show no mercy to the already flagging crowd. Crunching through ‘Feeding Frenzy’ and ‘American Dream,’ the near-brutal Candace (who needs no introduction) takes a stance similar to Tairrie B and spends the entire set immersed amongst the crowd who scream along with her every word. Rounding off the end to a very ear-drum bursting night, WoJ hold no bars in sucking up every last drop of energy from their gawping on-lookers.


Reviewed by Rhys Heal

Photography by Rhys Heal