The band are, and have always been, anonymous. Now that Sleep Token have become a global phenomenon there will be many newcomers to the project that call copycat or claim the band are jumping on the mask-wearing bandwagon, but Gaerea’s anonymity represents something very different. They aren’t worshipping a deity, they aren’t world-building or storytelling. They’re removing their identity from their music so they can explore their musical direction on a blank canvas, embracing whatever their palette decides to splash on it. On ‘Loss’, that creative freedom has painted an incredibly colourful picture.

The core DNA of Gaerea is still very much intact on this record, and it sounds just as impassioned and visceral as ever. Tracks like the blistering ‘Submerged’ and the relentless ‘Phoenix’ rocket forward with a fierce intensity, laced with a post metal serenity that makes everything sound that little bit more epic. There are some ominously dark numbers here too, most notably ’Uncontrolled’, and the dense smog seeping from its main motif. As mentioned earlier, though, this record has some curveballs that really set it apart from their previous records. The biggest, and perhaps most unexpected surprise on ‘Loss’, is the singing. 

Some fans of the band will love the clean singing on this album and embrace it warmly. Others will completely stand against it. One thing is undeniable though; it fits, and it’s performed with such an impressive range and emotive intensity that suggests it’s a trick they’ve been sat on for a hot minute. Album opener ‘Luminary’ starts off as a wrecking ball of power, giving way to a huge chorus that gives the song a gigantic lift. ‘Cyclone’ is stunning and it wouldn’t sound anywhere near as moving if it wasn’t sung so beautifully, the softer moments allowing the sharper ones to cut even deeper.

A nine track album may seem short on the surface, but the runtime clocks in at around 46 minutes and none of it feels like filler. Every track is intentional, placed in the track listing purposefully, and the way the record closes out is magical. The expansive tones of ‘LBRNTH’ set the tone for ‘Nomad’, a track that feels incredibly cinematic. The chorus cries of “I am the nomad, carrying a weight that I’ll never show” are spine-tingling, the feral drum-work and intricate guitar lines surrounding it locked in a tug of war between melody and malevolence. The final track, ‘Stardust’, is the showstopper here. There’s delicate guitar licks, atmospheric electronics, guttural screams, devastating percussion and bags upon bags of emotion. It’s both a thematic and sonic bookend, a firm and well-rounded full stop to a breathtaking album.

This is an incredibly important record in Gaerea’s discography, sure, but it’s a little bit more than that. The experimentation, the risks, the ambition; it’s their most accessible album by a country mile, but it doesn’t feel like they’ve had to sacrifice any of their punch to achieve that. ‘Loss’ is an album that’s been influenced by black metal but not defined by it, and it sets the band an incredibly big challenge. How on Earth do they top this?

DAVE STEWART

It might have taken a long time for ‘Peace In Place’ to materialise – almost twenty years – but the wait has been more than worth it. If anything, the wait has made the record more special and impactful. Poison The Well are one of those bands from the most precious era of metalcore who have continued to blossom, even during their time away. Some bands call it a day and their records simply become a nostalgia trip, a fond moment in time. Poison The Well called it a day and their absence widened as time passed, the thoughtfulness and unpredictability of their output becoming a prime example of how genre boundaries can be stretched. Their music has an identity, and it’s very much intact here.

Opener ‘Wax Mask’ immediately sets the tone, a barbed bruiser with eerie melodic flourishes. It’s almost a nod to fan favourite ‘Botchla’, opening with distant feedback as vocalist Jeff Moreira softly sings “I’ll change my colours and show myself out” before erupting into dark chaos. It’s a statement; they’re back, and they’ve not lost any of their bite. They keep the intensity up with ‘Primal Bloom’, driven by a hardcore energy and bookended by an earth-shattering breakdown, following it with the enormous ‘Thoroughbreds’ which puts the band’s creativity and boundary pushing nature front and centre. 

In classic Poison The Well fashion, this record isn’t afraid to switch gears and it keeps the record exciting and attention-grabbing from front to back. ‘Everything Hurts’ serves as a pit-rager in ballad clothing. ‘Drifting Without End’ is a dark slow burner, underpinned by an incredibly dense and ominous atmosphere. ‘Bad Bodies’ is a pure pulveriser, designed for one thing and one thing only; bedlam. They manage to create this incredibly unique sensation as you listen; the songs themselves feel unstable and unpredictable at times, but the pace of the record feels so carefully curated that you’re almost ready for the sudden turns.

The one-two punch that closes the record out is magical, further showing that the band have somehow managed to become more imaginative and creative with time. The structure of ‘Melted’ describes how the song structure feels, seeing elements of hardcore, grunge, metalcore, shoegaze and more merge together to create a varied and hefty punch. It perfectly tees up the album closer ‘Plague Them The Most’, closing things out with the most chaotic and furious song of their return. Littered with breakdowns, delicate interludes, blast beats, ominous melodies and more, it’s a three minute-long roller coaster ride that sums up the entire record. Ambitious, imaginative, adrenaline-fuelled bliss.

‘Peace In Place’ is more than just a return for Poison The Well. It’s a continuation of their legacy. The quality and critical acclaim of their past music set a seriously high bar for this record to leap over and, unsurprisingly, they’ve gracefully leapt over it without even grazing it. This is sure to be welcomed with open arms by their fanbase, serving as an incredibly powerful reminder of their uniqueness. For anyone yet to be initiated – the younger generations, the new breed of heavy music fans – this is going to be the perfect introduction to one of the most consistent discographies in metalcore. Say hello to your new favourite band. Again.

DAVE STEWART

‘Where The Light Leaves’ is an introspective journey through Conder’s mind and the often gruelling battles that he’s had with it. Taking its title literally, it’s not so much about observing the light leaving as it is about the absence of it. The album lives in that space, and it’s not trying to get out; it’s accepting that it can’t and maybe it won’t, and the mixed emotions that accompany that realisation make it a surprisingly resonant listen. There are moments of calm and peace, but they’re fleeting. For the most part it’s a non-stop assault, bathed in thick, thick darkness. A brutal record that could beat you within an inch of your life, but will probably apologise to you afterwards.

The opening title track does a great job of setting the scene for what’s to come. Mechanical whirrs and shrieks erupt into a wall of distorted noise, with Conder’s bellowing vocal line “If I have to break, then the world will know my fucking pain” delivering the first of many punches to the gut. Clocking in at under two minutes, it’s designed to intimidate and does it perfectly.

Varials have retained all the characteristics that made records like ‘Pain Again’ and ‘In Darkness’ so memorable, but there’s now an underlying feeling that you aren’t safe. It’s a thriller in audio form. Songs like ‘No Lie Untouched’, ‘Blissful End’ and the delicious sequel ‘Romance II’ bear a strong resemblance to the version of the band you’re familiar with, but they’ve presented the songs in a way that feels far more unstable. The structure of the songs is far less predictable and while there are recognisable verses and choruses, they’re placed in the songs to provide the occasional sense of familiarity, not a hook. They don’t want you to feel comfortable.

Where this record really sets itself apart from the rest of their catalogue is in its heavier moments. First single ‘I’ll Find The Dark’ is the best example of that, filling every corner of the mix with droning heaviness and eerie atmospherics to deliver an evil, apocalyptic sound. The band were already heavy, but the murkiness that runs through every track is incredibly exciting and curiously alluring. ‘Your Soul Feeds’ fits that to a tee; a completely unpredictable mosh-fest that continues to get heavier and heavier, even when you think that’s not possible. 

The band have always been good at breakdowns, and this record is chock full of some real neck-snappers. Unexpected tempo shifts, bass drops, obscene guitar and bass tones, snare bombs, blood curdling vocals – they’re all here, fine-tuned and optimised for carnage. Conder has clearly spent some time crafting his mosh calls too, designed to elicit unrestrained violence. Take ‘Metanoia’ as an example. One of his pre-breakdown lines is “I don’t wanna die to be forgotten, ‘cause life’s a bitch at the fucking bottom.” A little on the nose, sure. But will it cause venue security teams some serious issues whilst they try to monitor its aftermath in a pit? Yes. Yes it will.

‘Where The Light Leaves’ is a dense and often overpowering album, and intentionally so. It is pain, screaming at the top of its lungs into a black hole as it swallows every decibel, slowly becoming numb to its surroundings. It is without a doubt the most intense record of their career so far, painting an incredibly accurate picture of mental health’s darker side and the longing to find a way back to brighter days. It’s not a happy record by any means, but the beautiful thing is that if you find yourself relating to the album in any way, you might just find a hand reaching out to you from its depths.

If ominous, unrelenting, brutish metal is your cup of tea, then this is essential listening. Varials have never sounded this vital.

DAVE STEWART

It becomes immediately clear that they’re picking up exactly where they left off. Right from the hypnotic opening of ‘Dawn In Me’ and its spine tingling melodic shifts, the band begins to display their grasp on ebb and flow, with guitarists Rabea Massaad and Joe Gosney trading licks and stabs while vocalist Josh McKeown flits from soaring melody to violent scream. There’s more of the same embedded in the towering ‘Satellites’, a hefty and muscular delight that switches gears from menacing verse to uplifting chorus with maximum impact. 

While it’s good to hear that the band have made something that sits comfortably aside their debut, it’s even better to hear them broadening their palette. ‘Deadweight’ offers an almost Korn-like main motif, rooted in a low-tuned groove that skulks and pounds before being lifted by McKeown’s strained vocal line, “Do you want to become the person you hate?” There’s a lot of aggression coursing through ‘Stuck’ too. Ominous vocal melodies are draped over its weighty riffs that really erupt into catastrophe in the closing moments, enhanced by some of McKeown’s most brutal tones work to date. 

The soundscapes the band have become so adept at creating are at their absolute best here. The ballad-hybrid ‘Moth Becomes The Flame’ is a masterclass in suspense, starting softly with soul-stirring pianos before evolving into a widescreen, full band metallic colossus. Closing track ‘Serpent’ is perhaps the mostly aptly named song on the EP, writhing and stalking underneath delicate melodies before coiling and constricting at its colossal closing crescendo. The band set an incredibly high bar for themselves with ‘Apricity’, and somehow they’ve managed to vault over it with plenty of air beneath them. Put simply, this is the sound of a band that isn’t going to spend much more time as an underground secret.

If there was one word to describe this whole EP, that word would be “thoughtful.” The music is incredibly intricate, displaying everything from static calm to raging aggression and masterfully navigating between them, but the lyrics are the icing on the proverbial cake. McKeown has an incredible ability to convey so much emotion with his voice, allowing the introspective nature of the lyrics to resonate like he’s speaking directly to your soul. Lines like “I am more than a clenched fist in the silence, I am more than the knife twist that gives me guidance” in ‘Moth Becomes The Flame’ are breathtaking, delivered with meaning and oozing with feeling. 

While you can hear the sum of the band’s parts, with elements of Palm Reader, Black Peaks and Toska all dancing with one another, the songs never sound as though they’re imitating those projects. Their collective experience and creativity has melded together to form something that stands on its own. You could hear that the whole way through ‘Apricity’, but ‘A Storm Lined With Silver’ feels even more refined. The power of this EP is undeniable, as is the band’s destiny to continue ascending through the ranks. The sky is the limit.

DAVE STEWART

Right from the opener ‘Gallop Of The Hounds’, it’s very clear that the music is as epic and powerful as it always has been. With huge guitars that somewhere between rock and thrash, the pounding groove elevates the towering chorus and gets the record off to a strong start. Following track ‘Fail In Time’ is another slice of the same, delivering fist-pumping riffs while vocalist Luke Bentham steals the show with his captivating voice. Examine the lyrics, though, and you’ll begin to see where the difference is. Their vulnerability is still there, but it’s laced with pessimism, negativity and despair. The music still appears colourful, but there’s a lot of shadows being cast onto them.

‘Rock And Roll Band’ explores the realities of being in a modern touring band, shining a light on the industry bigwigs making more money than the artists they exploit. ‘Hero Narrative’ is a towering rock banger, being candid about relationships falling apart. ‘Spider Dream’ is haunting; ebbing and flowing through some beautiful passages as Bentham shares his inner burdens. It feels almost like the album is like a therapy session. Perhaps this is why the colours seem less bright; the depths of one’s soul can be a pretty shadowy place.

For all the doom and gloom, though, there are some incredible highlights. Album closer ‘I Was A Henchman’ is a very punchy way to end a record, a scathing dissection of abandoning religion. ‘That Don’t Mean It Won’t Sting’ is delicious too, armed to the teeth with Weezer-like groove while Bentham muses over emotional wounds. ‘This Is Me Warning Ya’ is the show-stealer, though. Serving as a mid-record breather, it’s a stripped back heart-wrencher with some of the most beautiful lyrics of their career. Written about making mistakes and hindsight, the line “I chased a ray of sun into armageddon” might be a career highlight.

This is almost like a version of the band from a parallel universe. The vibe is darker and the lyrical outlook is bleaker, but they still deliver that adrenaline surge that got us all hooked in the first place. They’ve leaned even further into the sound they established on ‘Free Rein To Passions’ and created something more mature, more anthemic and designed for big rooms. The album is over in thirty minutes which feels like too soon, but it’s all the more reason to press that repeat button. Their best record so far? It could well be.

DAVE STEWART

The opening number ‘Special’ does a great job of setting the tone for both the music and the lyrical themes. Delving into vocalist Kat Moss’s inner turbulence about the band’s ever-growing popularity while craving normality, the track glistens with melody – something Moss has turned up the dial on throughout the album – while the biting riffs and raw harmonics provide that familiar serrated backbone. What follows is a mixture of the expected and the unexpected. This is eleven tracks of adrenaline-surging hardcore, but you’ve never heard Scowl this open and vulnerable.

There’s plenty to sink your teeth into here, but what you’re consuming is seasoned differently to what you’re used to. ‘Cellophane’ is a menacing thrasher, its jagged guitars and unrelenting pace creating a huge sonic wrecking ball. ‘B.A.B.E’ belongs on a Tony Hawks Pro Skater soundtrack, that rapid pace, hook-heavy chorus and sunny disposition practically designed for chugging a litre of cranberry juice cruising down the freeway. ‘Fantasy’ has an almost Nirvana edge to it, with delicious vocal melodies draped over rabid, energetic grunge and a seriously dirty bass tone as Moss discusses feeling distant from the very scene she’s a part of. There’s hook-fest ‘Not Hell, Not Heaven’, the moody and groovy ‘Fleshed Out’, the furious crescendo of the closing title track – the flow of the the record is immaculate, moving through a plethora of different vibes without anything sounding out of place.

Where the album excels, though, is where they explore their newfound melodic side. ‘Suffer The Fool (How High Are You?)’ is almost a Weezer song with that perfect head-banging pace, chunky guitars and angelic harmonies caressing your brain on what could be a huge radio smash. The guitars on ‘Tonight (I’m Afraid)’ are beautifully structured, weaving in and out of the foreground to allow the bass and vocals to take the spotlight in all the right places. One of the standouts is ‘Haunted’, which appears late in the album as a brief respite before the bedlam of the album closer. A graceful yet rough-edged waltz, the track is the most anthemic the band has ever been, and the impact is has is surprisingly powerful.

‘Are We All Angels’ sees Scowl at their sweetest, but there’s a lethal spice laced within the sugar that makes the band more dangerous than they’ve ever been. At the height of their career, they’ve released their most diverse and colourful record, spending most of its duration bounding through the brighter hues on the palette. But there’s the occasional dash of blood red, and that makes the band thrash like a shark in deep open waters.

This is the same Scowl that cut through the chaff with their razor sharp brand of ferocity, but on ‘Are We All Angels’ they’re hiding their blades in delicious, brightly coloured candy. This might look like a safe and easy to digest record on the surface but remember, appearances can be deceiving. You are not safe.

DAVE STEWART

This is one of those EP’s where you need to firmly strap yourself in before you press play. With just six tracks to show off on, Church Tongue have made sure that the only opportunities for respite are in between each song; if they’re making noise, you have nowhere to hide. Surprising, then, that the EP is thematically centred on love and lyrically approaches the subject from different viewpoints. Lead single ‘Bury Me (One Thousand Times)’ musically establishes exactly what you can expect from the release; intense heaviness and relentless aggression woven with flashes of terror. Love has never sounded so sinister.

The record’s opening number ‘Heart Of Darkness’ grabs you by the throat and gradually tightens its grip throughout, throwing vicious vocals and devastating riffs at you from every angle and utilising subtle but impactful tempo changes to enhance their bite. ‘One Hand Wrapped Around The Sun’ continues the pummelling, its relentless pace creating a sense of panic that the barrage of distortion continues to build until it explodes into its closing breakdown. It’s punch after punch, non-stop intensity, and it’s designed to be that way.

Some guests also grace a handful of the tracks, lending their influence to proceedings in a really powerful way. Twitching Tongues vocalist Colin Young appears on the furious ‘When It Betrays’, the only track on the EP that features clean singing and it doesn’t feel out of place in the slightest. ‘The Fury Of Love’ is an evil monster of a track, with stomach churning riffs and some cataclysmic drops that Initiate’s Crystal Pak makes sound even more eerie in the closing moments. The real treat here is the epic title track, with Deafheaven’s George Clarke layering his formidable banshee-esque scream to this black metal-leaning fright-fest about loving someone so much that you’d haunt them if you died first. Cute, right?

Church Tongue have written every track here with intent, in full control of where they’re steering their musical direction to create a collection of tracks that cover a lot of ground in its six tracks. It picks up where their previous release ‘The Hubris Of Gods Departed’ left off and tightens the screws on every aspect of their sound, putting their alluring rawness at its core while pulling thrash, death and black metal influences into their orbit. If you’ve yet to discover Church Tongue this is the perfect place to start. ‘You’ll Know It Was Me’ is about as devastating as metalcore can be.

DAVE STEWART

Openers Greyhaven walk on stage to a warm welcome from an incredibly busy room, both the floor and balcony full of audio-hungry faces that are eager to hear what they’re capable of. This is their second ever UK show and a good portion people in the crowd are moshing and screaming their words back to them, elating the band and feeding into the energy of their set. Some of the riffs fall a little flat in places and lack the impact of their incredible records, likely due to their single guitar approach with no backing tracks, but the bare bones approach has to be respected; it’s refreshing to see a band just do it the “old school” way. From newer smashes like ‘The Welcome Party’ to some golden deep cuts like set closer ‘Echo And Dust, Pt.1’, their technical, raw and melodically rich brand of metalcore washes over the crowd like a morning sunrise, thawing any remaining icicles from the January cold and preparing them for what’s about to be a very sharp uptick in chaos.

You know that when you hear incoherent static and see strobe lights flickering in unison, you’re about to witness something crazy. Tonight, that something crazy is Frontierer. Imagine if The Dillinger Escape Plan down-tuned all their instruments, switched on all of their guitar pedals, threw them in a washing machine and then had a fight with the washing machine; that only begins to unpack what they sound like. Their performance sits somewhere between feral and robotic, the band thrashing their instruments and bodies whilst somehow managing to retain a robotic tightness to their sound, creating brief moments of total silence in the songs that are just as impactful as the barrage of noise. The mix is crushing, too, the bass so powerful it shakes the building, and those not sucked into the bedlam of the pits are left looking onwards in awe and bewilderment. The set is a like having an acid trip on a rollercoaster, which isn’t a surprise. Would a moment of respite to catch our breath have been nice? Sure, maybe. Do Frontierer have any songs in their catalogue that can provide that? No. No they do not. They’re capable of mayhem and mayhem only, and that’s exactly what they provided.

Now it’s time for the main event, the headliner, the band that everyone has been eagerly waiting for: Better Lovers. Comprised of former members of Every Time I Die and The Dillinger Escape Plan, as well as a Grammy-nominated producer, they’re a powerhouse on paper and most certainly on record, too. Can they replicate that power in a live setting? Without a shadow of a doubt, yes. The lights dim, a medley of classic love songs rumbles through the speakers, and during the crescendo that the snippet of Queen’s glorious ‘Somebody To Love’ created, the band emerges from the shadows. Wasting no time, the opening notes of ‘Lie Between The Lines’ summon the venues mosh-hungry attendees to split the room, and the chaos begins immediately. Without even a millisecond to catch our breaths, they rip into ‘Sacrificial Participant’, a fitting anthem for everyone throwing arms in the pit, and we’re left in immediate awe. Their mission statement has become immediately clear; take no prisoners, don’t hold back, make sure everyone leaves with borderline chronic neck pain.

The setlist that follows is sheer bliss. The breakneck pace of ‘Your Misplaced Self’ whips the circle pits into near warp speed, as does the frantic riff-work in ‘Superman Died Paralyzed’, but things really kick up a notch when they launch into ‘A White Horse Covered In Blood’. The first single to be taken from latest album ‘Highly Irresponsible’, it’s clearly a crowd favourite, demonstrated by the wealth of bodies surfing towards the stage. The only body not yet surfing is that of vocalist Greg Puciato, a man who usually spends a lot of his time not on the stage, but his presence tonight is still unhinged and wild and it seemingly enhances the rest of the band’s performances too. The punishment continues with the devastating one-two hit of standalone singles ‘The Flowering’ and ‘Two Alive Amongst The Dead’, then the crushing weight of ‘Future Myopia’ and what can only be referred to as that riff; they don’t put a foot wrong the entire night, but its the last stretch of the set that feels the most special.

The set sees its first real change of pace with the epic ‘At All Times’, tapping into a side of the band that isn’t often tapped into but is always a treat to experience. If you heard them playing the aforementioned cover at previous shows, that influence really shines through here – you can really hear Soundgarden in this, and those delicious tones hypnotise the crowd into a calm that they’ve not experienced the entire night. It’s a much needed breather before a cataclysmic end of the set, kicked off by huge renditions of ‘God Made Me An Animal’ and the melodic-yet-monolithic ‘Love As An Act Of Rebellion’, both seeing guitarist Jordan Buckley repeatedly yell “circle pit” into the spare stage mic. The crowd obey his demands with zero resistance, and the intensity builds to a fever pitch once again. We aren’t quite done just yet, though. There’s one final hurrah…

The band’s first single, the song that started it all, is the perfect song to end the evening on. After a little singalong to everyone’s favourite nursery rhyme (spoiler alert: everyone was happy and clapped their hands), ‘30 Under 13’ sees the electricity in the room reach its peak, the entire crowd seeming to move and shift as one with every riff the band plays conducting its movement. The pit is at its wildest, the voices are at their loudest, and somehow the band are at their most active, all stomping and thrashing across the entire width of the stage. Puciato finally seizes the opportunity to do his usual “I’m not going to be on stage for a bit” routine and seeing it feels like a very early Christmas gift, or a slightly late one depending on your outlook. He writhes atop the crowd, still blasting his vocals with that staggering power, and by the time the song comes to a close the entire room is left breathless. Breathless from exhaustion, but also from the sheer power of what just happened.

This show will have been the first of the year for a lot of the people tonight, and what a way to kick off the year. One of heavy music’s brightest lights, with one of heavy music’s most visceral shows, proving that they’re fully deserving of the hype that’s got them selling out a 1700 cap venue a mere two years into their career. The best thing? They’re just getting started. A glorious celebration of how far they’ve come in such a short time as a band; long may they continue.

DAVE STEWART