On a cold January evening 500 metalhead gathered for a sold out show at the Camden underworld Fleshgod Apocalypse headline tonight with a tour in support of their new album ‘King’ opening tonight are NightLand from Italy and from the Netherlands in main support we have Carach Angren.
NightLand, an Italy band are up first, although not heard of this band before personally yet this band give the audience a good show of what they’re about. The two stand-out tracks of their set were the title from their debut album ‘Obsession’ and “Icarus”, they seem to go down well, plus set the tone for the evening, which involved an impressive 30 minute set.
Carach Angren out of the Netherlands are up next, with an orchestral opening their set, after this it’s they’re straight in with “There’s “No Place like Home” and it’s just what you would expect; entirely brutal with heavy elements an impressive effect, considering I’m not much of a death metal fan! I’m really enjoying this along with most of the audience. You would be mistaken for thinking you’d be watching Fleshgod Apocalypse the band itself, who’re dressed almost the same, other than the fact they’re all wearing corpse paint. As the band play “Departure Towards”, A Nautical Curse” from ‘The Death came through A Phantom Ship’, album, the place explodes in a flurry of mosh pits and crowd surfing going on, even though The Underworld has strictly ‘No crowd surfing’ signs up, that’s not going to stop anybody.
Seregor the bands’ front man does well to avoid being kicked in the face several times amidst all the chaos, although he seems to be enjoying himself, in fact he’s encouraging it!! The band really seems to be putting on a brilliant show tonight as they play a few more songs. Admittedly I do love how the bands’ keyboard player enthusiastically tilts it around as he plays it’s a visual I find interesting to watch we then get two tracks from the new album “When Crows Tick on Windows” and “Killed and Served by the Devil” which goes down very well indeed.
The band finishes out this monstrous set with another song in “Bloodstains on the Captains Log” which sends the place into one last frenzy, which includes wall of death. Once the break has finished, which was filled with classical music the whole time, to be honest I’ve never heard, before our headliners for this evening take to the stage to the opening track of their new album, ‘King’, “Marche Royal” right into “In Aeternum”, then into “Healing Through War” all of these tracks sound stunning Tommaso Riccardi sounds on strong form tonight, really great vocals from him. If you add to this both Cristiano Trionfera and Paolo Rossi are also sounding great tonight on these new songs they have the whole audience right behind them the band ramp up the energy in the room as they go onto “Pathfinder”, much to the crowds’ pleasure, you can tell with this track just how far this band has come since 2010 when the ‘Labyrinth’ album came out it’s a great experience to be a part of.
Once over we are told that tonight marks 10 years of the band playing in London I also love the fact that they use a real piano rather than a keyboard or having it played over the PA, it give it so much more atmosphere to the live show. “Cold As Perfection”, follows which we then move onto after the “Prologue” is played over the PA into “The Epilogue” I’ve always thought this is where Veronica Bordacchini with her operatic vocals, stands out the most on this track partially when they compliment the bands heaviness on this track superbly.
Then we’ve got my own personal favourite song of the night as the band play “The Fool”, the only downside of the whole evening comes here has the bass drums are so loud that the backing vocals are totally lost, again this is a fantastic performance by the whole of Fleshgod Apocalypse by the time the band get through the rest of the set, including one last song off the new album, “Syphilis”. Finishing up with “The Forsaken”.
Fleshgod Apocalypse & Carach Angren again made a statement tonight about how good they really are as live acts. I think from here these bands can only grow and play bigger and better venues to a lot more fans which is no more than they deserve.