Posts Tagged ‘Metal’

Remote Viewing – State Violence

Posted: 22 August 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Human Worth – 18th September 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Remote Viewing’s second album, Modern Addictions (2023) was a hypercharged, uncompromising beast of an album. This came as no real surprise, given that, as their bio reminds us, ‘Remote Viewing are formed from the ashes of Palehorse, consisting of current members of Million Dead, Sly & The Family Drone, and Hands Up Who Wants To Die’. Sure, when most people hear the word ‘supergroup’ they think of Hollywood Vampires, or Audioslave, or, I dunno, The Travelling Wilburys. They’re ‘super’ by virtue of big names coming together, but their output has a tendency to be underwhelming, because there tend to be super egos cancelling one another out and stifling any spark. But a supergroup at this level – a coming together of musicians of quite different stripes, but all with something different to contribute – in my experience, brings a different kind of energy. Perhaps it comes from the sense that they need to prove themselves, but equally, from the thrill of collaboration. This is the thing with collaboration: sometimes it gels, others it doesn’t. Modern Addictions proved that Remote Viewing gelled, coalescing into a colossal guitar-driven powerhouse.

Imagine my frustration at only being able to be in one place at a time when I pitched up at The Brudenell to see Mogwai to discover Remote Viewing were supporting Humanfly in the other room.

State Violence is pitched as ‘Their most direct statement yet… an unapologetic reflection on the increasing levels of injustice, social division, extreme wealth and human atrocities we are seeing the world over’.

Direct statements – certainly credible ones – have been in short supply in recent years from the political classes, and worse still, criticism of their actions – and inactions – have been subject to increasingly harsh penalties. While one genocide has been televised in real-time around the globe, it’s been all too easy for people to fail to even appreciate the state of things in Sudan, and to shrug off the war in and around Iran as being a distant thing. Here in the UK in particular, there’s a sense of collective smugness that we’re ok because we’re not there, and we don’t have to contend with ICE either, and it’s from that state of bubble that we conveniently overlook that to criticise the state of Israel using the wrong terminology could see you lose your job or even imprisoned. A portion of the populace has been distracted with finger-pointing at immigrants as the reason their lives are shit. Meanwhile, peaceful protest in support of a direct action group has been outlawed.

This is the point at which State Violence arrives, and hits the spot, and does so by driving straight to the heart of a very British way of living.

‘#makemoneymakelovemakemoney’ kicks off – literally – in a rabid squall of dingy guitar accompanied by churning bass and a raving vocal performance, a raw-throated scream. A hybrid of sludge, black-hued metal, and noise rock, there are some blankly nihilist passages which call to mind Kowloon Walled City – but when they slam the pedals on, the overdrive is a speaker-ripping blast. Opening an album with a six-minute mid-pace trudge that makes the skin crawl is inspired: it’s a move that will grab those who are on the market for a challenge, and send the rest running after a minute or so – if that.

‘Retrain as a Swan’, the album’s lead single is one of the least single-like singles you’ll hear all year. It’s great, but it’s bereft of hooks or an obvious road in, and is, instead, a gut-churning sonic assault. The title, incidentally, was the lead line on a poster / flyer / meme which proffered a parodic take on training and recruitment advertisements, and highlights just how typically British State Violence is in its outlook and humour. Yes, humour. Remote Viewing remind that rage doesn’t have to be without humour, and that if anything – and again, this is a uniquely British trait – the more abstract or self-deprecating, or sarcastic, the humour, the better.

The sludgy squall of ‘Disrespect the Arts’ appears to be a raging attack on the way that not only funding for the arts has been stripped (something also in a state of advancement in the US) and the teaching of art and music cut from school syllabi and courses in the arts – including those in literature – dropped from university programmes, while creative jobs are being canned in favour of fucking AI, which is killing the planet but benefits billionaires. Go figure. ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’ is just straight-up, slowed-down and sludgy, trudging, pounding, relentless, Godflesh heavy. It’s like the heels of heavy boots pounding on your chest, knocking the air out repeatedly until you have no breath, and feel blacked out and lifeless.

The nine-minute ‘Accidental Holiday’ marks quite a contrast, exploring spacious, post-rock territory for the first three minutes, before the riff powers in, and then… POW! All the rage explodes here. If it’s not one of the sludgiest, most brutal, slugging doom riff blasts you’ve heard this year, you haven’t actually heard it. But at the same time, it alludes to post-metal and neoprog, and the guitar textures and the spaces are remarkably well calculated: it’s so clearly apparent that there’s a rare musical intuition between these performers that however dark and gnarly State Violence gets, it’s still exhilarating.

But it’s the two-and-a-half-minute closer ‘Birds of the Feather is on in 7 minutes’ which really encapsulates what State Violence is all about, in that is encapsulates the absurd disconnect between the backdrop to life, and actual life as lived in Britain. It manifests as a delicate, slightly warping, droning sliver of post-rock ambience, and its difference from the rest of the album is significant. That seven minutes is time to make a cuppa and fetch the digestives before settling down to some crap TV. “I don’t watch the news, me, it’s too depressing,” people say. I say, “know your enemy”. But who needs news channels to pump state-sponsored propaganda when they get fed rage bait shit while scrolling social media and watching Love Island? State Violence is more about them than for them, but for those who need a visceral soundtrack that screams back from the void, Remote Viewing have delivered it.

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Watch: ‘Depths of Despair’ by Crucivore

Posted: 18 August 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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CRUCIVORE unveil the crushing music video ‘Depths of Despair’. This brand new track is the first advance single taken from their forthcoming debut full-length Desecration. The Portuguese’s first album has been scheduled for release on November 13, 2026.

Crucivore comment: “The track ‘Depths of Despair’ carries a distinctive sense of eerie darkness”, vocalist Ricardo Proença explains on behalf of the band. “This unsettling atmosphere is created by a melodic foundation that is contrasted with powerful grooves and precisely placed slams, which add crushing weight to the track. Lyrically, this song explores the feeling of being trapped within your own despair, with no apparent way out. Heavy, dark, and captivating, ‘Depths of Despair’ combines a cinematic feeling with brutality to a powerful and immersive experience.”

Check the video and prepare to be devastated here:

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Miško Boba / Hella Bore / Tame the Savage / Onion Terror – Micklegate Social, York, 14th August 2026

Posted: 15 August 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

A week ago, buying a ticket to see four metal bands for a tenner in a tiny basement venue seemed like a good idea. But then yet another heatwave happened, and arriving at the Mickelgate Social – something of a hipster bar just feet inside the city walls on what used to the York’s most notorious street for bars and nightclubs frequented by stag and hen dos and townies and other twats, which has gone rather more upmarket in recent years – damp and uncomfortable, I find myself questioning my sanity. The doors are 7:30, and I arrive some time after, but Tame The Savage are still soundchecking at 7:45 and Onion Terror are still to go. Provided I don’t collapse from heat exhaustion, I assume things can only improve. And, for the most part, they do.

Onion Terror are a duo: guitar, vocals, and drums and other backing off a phone. The guitarist is playing through a 5-watt practice amp that feeds back a lot, while the vocalist charges and leans and squats, alternately bellowing and growling, while sporting a pint balaclava. They clearly don’t intend to be taken seriously, but they are seriously good fun. Their eleven-minute set is a mash of all kinds of metal – primarily some mangled kind of grindcore, but with purposefully cheap-sounding drums and samples galore – consisting mostly vocal snippets about onions. It’s loud and it’s messy and makes for a great start to the night.

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Onion Terror

Tame the Savage trade in filthy punk, somewhat in the vein of Anti-Nowhere League. But what sets them apart from your meat-and-potatoes punk is the way the bass – played by the lead vocalist – carries the most weight, doing a lot of work on the upper half of the fretboard and the higher strings, and essentially playing it like a lead guitar, with a lot of mid and some distortion. But then, when he does drop to the lower octaves on the bottom strings, the impact is immense, a thick, rumbling groove melding with the hefty percussion. And the drummer looks like he’s having the time of his life.

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Tame the Save

Hella Bore’s bassist, wearing a facemask, baseball cap, and hoodie with the hood up – the dude must have been liquid inside that getup – approached me just before their set and requested no photos, so you’ll have to imagine him, and the singer, a stocky, shaven-headed guy with a waxed moustache, in a wifebeater and too-tight cutoff blue jeans shorts. Hmm. Perhaps this was why they didn’t want photos. The drummer, bearded and with plaited pigtails (when he removes the knitted balaclava with floppy rabbit ears) makes a nice addition to the visual. I’d like to report that they sound better than they look, and they do – although it’s marginal. It’s not that they can’t play: they evidently can. But what they play is like a Nu-metal Rage Against the Machine with Al Jorgensen’s vocals roaring over the top. The material is pretty leaden, the lyrics aren’t great and overall… It’s understandable why a large chunk of the audience take the opportunity to get some air during their set.

In contrast, Miško Boba have both their look and sound absolutely nailed, and just keep on getting better. They’re a cohesive unit, and each member brings something specific, but it’s in the way they come together which is where their strength lies. During the slow, slugging riff sections, they all bang heads in perfect union, the gut-churning five-string bass underpinning the twin guitar assault. At the back, Leviathan’s powerhouse drumming very much drives everything along, but it’s apparent that they all recognise that in Kanopa they have a formidable and compelling front woman. Visually, she’s impressive, a classic horror scene, a walking gorefest, appearing to have had her eyes torn out, and her arms are streaked with sanguine fluid. But this is nothing compared to the vocal performance, which is nothing short of spine-quivering, blood-curdling, demonic roar, a desperate purgatorial scream.

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Miško Boba

They just get heavier and more fierce as the set progresses, and seem to grow in confidence as well as intensity. The set may only feature seven songs, but it makes for a truly obliterative forty-five minutes, and any longer you’d probably feel your skull start to cave in. Tonight’s performance, which is pretty big on new material, is something else, and exemplifies why they deserve to be on a label, and to have PR pushing for their (inter)national exposure. This is a band who are taking black metal – and Lithuanian metal – to a place which warrants appreciation. If you want your metal black, you’ll find none more black than Miško Boba .

Smutclub Ldn–Elephant

Posted: 3 August 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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31st July 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

We really do seem to be experiencing a Nu-Metal renaissance right now. And of all the genres I would have put money on sinking without trace, it’s Nu-Metal, which felt like a flash-in-the-pan fad in the late 90s. The idea of crossing rap and metal wasn’t entirely new even then. Aerosmith’s collaboration with Rum DMC may have sown the seeds, but it was most definitely a meeting of rock and rap. The collaborations which featured on the Judgement Night soundtrack in 1993, however, very much brought rap and metal together, and set the precedent for what Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park would go on to do. Helmet and House of Pain? Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.? Slayer and Ice T? These were some fierce collisions of rap and metal. This was radical. But that was 1993 – and what a time to be alive! And now it’s 2026. Thirty-three years have elapsed. Holy shit. It’s not exactly ‘nu’ anymore. Is it? Perhaps it’s time for a rebrand. And since we’ve had Post-punk and even The New Wave of New Wave, how about Nu-Nu Metal, or ‘The Nu-Metal Revival’ or ‘The Nu-Metal Renaissance’?

But while the Nu-Metal scene of the late 90s was dominated by blokes venting versions of adolescent rage (although Fred Durst was nearing 30 when Limp Bizkit released their debut album, and there always felt like a sense of arrested development hung around the genre – older guys making records for disaffected teens), the current scene is altogether more diverse, and most significantly, we’re seeing female-fronted acts like Eville breaking through and kicking arse.

Smutclub Ldn share some common ground with Eville, as is happens, with whacked-out pop autotune colliding with skull-crunching riffs. And as such, ‘Elephant’ is a brain-melting identity crisis of a single: clocking it at precisely three minutes, it’s a mental mash-up of nu-metal, emo, and pop, all brought together and heated under compression, with explosive results.

The verse riff is a gnarly, churning beast which chugs and undulates menacingly, the chorus sounds like it belongs to a completely different song, and the breaks and bridges are something else again. How do you switch between hands-in the-air anthem and brutal slam-dancing and back again, and again, in just three minutes? ‘Elephant’ is positively schizophrenic, and love it or hate it, it’s the most inventive thing you’re likely to hear in 2026.

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Pop Goes Metal / Dismiss / Too Late for Gods – The Fulford Arms, York, 26th July 2026

Posted: 27 July 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Did I ever mention how much I fucking hate ABBA? No? Well, I really, really fucking hate ABBA, and pretty much all covers of ABBA songs too, with the exception of The Sisters of Mercy’s cover of ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ which made the set a few times in 1984 just after Wayne Hussey joined. To provide a measure of just how much I fucking hate ABBA, just after university, my then girlfriend and I got a flat, and took her best mate on as a lodger. She loved ABBA. So much so that ABBA Gold was pretty much, the only CD she owned. And she played it all the time. That’s no exaggeration. We’re talking legitimate grounds for eviction or even murder here. So when I upgraded my stereo, instead of selling the old one – which would have fetched a good hundred and fifty quid, which was some wedge back in ’98 – I gave it to her for her room on the proviso that she would never play ABBA in the living room ever again. The rationale for this anecdote will make sense later on.

Meanwhile, when I took this gig on, I hadn’t appreciated that the band I was here for – Dismiss – were only the support, and it blows my mind that a band with some kind of following, however moderate here, would come from Greece to support a local covers band in York. We’ll come back to this presently, too.

My introduction to Too Late for Gods was a pub gig on the other side of town, and my reaction was very much mixed. So, seeing them on a proper stage, through a full PA, and without the element of surprise means I’m in a better position to properly assess their skills.

Their first song is a straight up post-hardcore metal rager, the five-string bass bringing significant depth and power. It’s the grunge leanings which shine through during the next couple of songs, and it’s very soon apparent what a difference a decent mix can make to how songs come across. There are some meh punk pop / emo cuts mid-set, but they’re performed with guts and gusto, which carries them. Their drummer is a solid asset, too, a strong player with a big personality, bringing dynamics and showmanship, and very much driving the band. The penultimate song of the set has a hint of Placebo and a strong hook. They look comfortable in this setting, and give the impression that they would deliver in significantly larger venues, too.

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Too Late for Gods

I’m here for Dismiss, and woah! They are all the energy straight out of the traps. My notes are scant: I’m too busy trying to catch my breath. They play hard rock with a punk edge, and they bring the fire, and what’s more, they’re absolutely relentless, powering through fifteen original songs in forty minutes (the setlist indicates that they dropped two from the planned set, too), but it feels like about twenty whiplash-inducing minutes, as they the songs back-to-back. Their singer is a blur of peroxide, the bassist is a spike-studded energy blast, and they make a strong case for the prosecution in the case that women rock harder than men. And if we’re doing touchstones and references, Lita Ford and The Plasmatics and Amyl and the Sniffers are where we’re at. They absolutely fucking slay. You wouldn’t want to go on after them, especially as, judging by the T-shirts on display, a good number of the punters are here for them. And deservedly. They absolutely play their arses off and are nothing short of phenomenal. Not only band of the night, but one of the highlights of the year to date.

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Dismiss

But suddenly, just as Pop Goes Metal take to the stage, the place is rammed from the front to the back. I guess this is telling. Do we talk about covers bands? Should we contemplate guilty pleasures? I wrote about covers bands just the other night – but can’t help but feel differently about covers bands playing village pubs as background, and covers bands playing ‘proper’ venues and headlining over bands playing sets of original material. Like Natalie Imbruglia, I’m torn. It’s great that people are coming out to small venues and supporting live music. But…

I’ve personally never been embarrassed by my appreciation of pop tunes, and I don’t just mean the 80s stuff I grew up with, like Duran Duran and A-Ha. A good tune is a good tune, irrespective of genre. As such, I’m personally comfortable with the fact that Pop Goes Metal start strong with a thunking Nu-metal take on Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl’. However, am I comfortable with the principle of what is, in essence, a novelty covers act? While perhaps not as corny as, say, Elvana or Tragedy (the metal Bee gees tribute), they certainly sit within that bracket.

Objectively, Pop Goes Metal do a great job of delivering what they pitch. They bring a brace of chunky guitars melded to a chunky rhythm section, and Emz gives us gutsy vocals, with rasp and power. Britney’s ‘Toxic’ is a solid choice at the front end of the set and works over the more obvious choice of Britney tunes in terms of their sonic and stylistic range. The Dua Lipa and Billie Eilish songs are beyond my ken, but they go down well.

New addition to the set, ‘Umbrella’ is only so-so, and while Emz reads the lyrics from her phone, the song slides into an extended fretwanking solo. Their interpretation of Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown Funk’ sounds too much like ‘Free Range’ by The Fall crossed with ‘Black Betty’ to be entirely successful, and while ‘Let Me Entertain You’ benefits from a huge chugging break, it’s still a shit song. ‘Toca’s Miracle’ translates from a dance-pop banger to a thunderous disco metal banger, and it would be curmudgeonly not to acknowledge a job well done there.

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Pop Goes Metal

The audience is particularly hyped and vocal, and increasingly so as the night progresses. Emz’s voice starts to go with five songs to go, and by the end she can barely croak between songs, but still belts ‘em out full lungs. ‘Shake it Off’ not only proves I’ve never knowingly heard a song by Taylor Swift, but that perhaps I’m not entirely the target demographic. ‘Sk8er Boi’ comes in pretty much untouched, and Anastacia’s ‘Left Outside Alone’ is a strong tune that it would be hard to go wrong with, and credit where it’s due, they do it justice. And then it’s onto ending on ‘Mama Mia’… just no. No no no no. They’ve crossed the line.

Watch: ‘These Blades’ by Leper Colony

Posted: 14 July 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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LEPER COLONY drop the first brutal advance track ‘These Blades’ taken from the deadly international trio’s new full-length Back to Primal Sludge. The third album of these death metal fanatics has been slated for release on October 9, 2026.

LEPER COLONY comment on ‘These Blades’: “This ferocious track whips uptempo filth your way and opens up a new breathing hole in your neck”, shred-master Rogga Johansson claims. “Meaty, fully fleshed-out riffs, mercilessly pounding drums, and a brutal vocal delivery deluxe are included. For us, ‘These Blades’ creates a perfect equilibrium between the American and Swedish approaches to death metal.”

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LEPER COLONY hold firm and relentlessly soldier on in their unholy quest to create the perfect equilibrium between the Floridian and Stockholm styles of old school death metal on their third full-length Back to Primal Sludge.

This defines Back to Primal Sludge in many ways as a direct continuation of their sophomore album Those of the Morbid (2025). Yet, there are twists and tweaks in the details. While the previous release offered a handful of references to deadly German influences, these have been further reduced just as the second album had dropped the classic thrash elements from the self-titled LEPER COLONY debut (2023).

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Listen: ‘Whispers (Live in Belfast)’ by Cwfen

Posted: 12 June 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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What happens when the release of a band’s debut exceeds their wildest dreams of what’s possible? 12 months ago, Cwfen (pronounced ‘Coven’) released their first album, Sorrows, which emerged from attempts to demo some material at a friend’s studio in a remote Scottish farmhouse. The results received instant and widespread acclaim, enjoying glowing reviews in the heavy music press (Metal Hammer, Kerrang!) and featuring in album of the year lists at the close of 2025.

Fast forward 12 months and the band have toured extensively with Paradise Lost and Faetooth, and played countless festival stages, crushing audiences and gaining new fans with consistently powerful performances of the Sorrows material.

To mark the first anniversary of the release of their debut, and the whirlwind 12 months that have passed since, the band are making two special releases of the album available for the first time. The first is a digital deluxe edition of Sorrows, which presents the original tracklist alongside more than 40 minutes of previously unheard music, including blistering live tracks from their early shows and recent touring, early demos of key songs, and eerie sonic experiments composed during the making of the album. The second new release is a special 3rd edition vinyl repress of Sorrows on neon violet vinyl, limited to 300 copies.

Fresh from a performance this week at Download Festival, the band are excited to share these releases, as they look ahead to a summer of festival performances across Europe, and then to beginning the process of preparing album number two.

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Watch: ‘Yo No Quiero Ir Al Cielo’ by Heavenly Trip To Hell

Posted: 23 May 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Industrial rock band, HEAVENLY TRIP TO HELL has just unleashed their newest single & video for the song, ‘Yo No Quiero Ir Al Cielo,’ recorded by Addasi Addasi at Fuel Music Studios.

Lead Vocalist G Christ explains the heart behind the track: “The song was inspired by the fact that we do not want to go to heaven where certain people can’t get in, I want to go to a heaven where everyone gets in.” This release continues HEAVENLY TRIP TO HELL’s signature sounds – industrial metal fused with goth and heavy metal – born from the dirty streets of Long Beach, California.

Check it here:

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HEAVENLY TRIP TO HELL aka HTTH is made up of 6 members – G Christ on lead vocals, Sergio on Bass, Vicky Vicious on synth and keyboards, Jose on drums, Kurt on lead guitars, and Frank on rhythm guitar. Over the years the band has built a strong underground presence, including a growing footprint in Hollywood, consistently selling out iconic venues such as The Viper Room, Whisky a Go Go, and The Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset Boulevard.

Now celebrating nearly 30 years on the streets. HTTH has shared the stage with some of the with some of the biggest names in rock n’ roll, including Dead Kennedys, Guns N’ Roses, Billy Idol, and more – cementing their place in the lineage of legendary live performers. From there, the band reflects on a legacy built deep in the underground scene. As guitarist Kurt puts it: “Give ‘em hell!” HTTH continues forward as a relentless force in heavy music, with a story still unfolding.

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GURT – Survival of the Shittest

Posted: 12 May 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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5th June 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I laugh, because the phrase ‘survival of the shittest’ was a phrase I used – a lot – in the late 90s, in my early years of being thrown into the corporate world after completing a degree in English literature. Back then, the belief still existed that a better education would lead to a better job, although in the three years between starting my degree and finishing it, a lot changed, and none of it for the good. ‘Graduate jobs’ stopped being a thing, meaning that it was a feat just to land a temp job doing data input work at an insurance company. It was fucking soul crushing, and Charles Bukowski’s Factotum became a book I came to relate to all too closely as I trudged my way through what felt like endless drudgery. And the managers, those who got promoted, those who did well? The common trait among them seemed to be that, when you boiled it down to the basics, they were all cunts. Backstabbers, self-promoters, overconfident wankers, twats with all the ambition but none of the skills… these bastards were killing it on the career ladder, while I sloughed away in a pit of despair. Scum floats, and all around me, it did. I wasn’t envious of their lives or their ‘careers’, but it was a gut-wrenching showcase of the shitshow that is capitalism and the greasy pole of corporate life: the survival of the shittest in sharp relief. This is now true of all aspects of life: as politics has become indistinguishable from business, and capitalism has taken over all aspects of existence, every bugger is using business-speak and striving to attain success not by means of hard work and talent, but by connivery and cuntishness. And it needs to be called out, and blocked wherever possible.

This new EP by GURT is nothing less than an absolute beast. With three tracks clocking in at ten and a half minutes, there’s no flab, no extravagant solos, no wanking about. They’re described as purveyors of ‘party doom’, but they’re a bit too uptempo to be doom and far too doomy to be party for most. Ultimately, their thing is a rabid racket, and at times, I’m reminded of the Leeds scene circa 2010 and shortly after, specifically around the emergence of crazed guitar noise acts like Pulled Apart by Horses and These Monsters. These were exciting times, particularly as it predated the need for professionalism to make it even onto a stage. Don’t get me wrong: these were great bands, but they were also wild, and things feel a lot more contained now.

GURT do not feel contained, GURT feel deranged, unhinged, rampant. ‘Live Nation, Dead Scene’ goes in all guns blazing, a rabid rager presumably targeted at the multinational ticket agency – operating what’s probably one of the biggest legal scams on the planet right now, with their exorbitant fees and dynamic pricing. The music industry has always sought to gouge every penny from fans while the artists themselves wallow at the bottom of the pile when it comes to benefiting from the proceeds, but Live Nation have hatched a whole new level of exploitatious robbery. They are literally – and yes, I do mean that – killing music for profit, and should be boycotted at all costs. I doubt this is a major issue for GURT.

The title track is a low-slung, sludgy, riff-driven roar, propelled by some ferocious drumming. The vocals are mangled to all hell, and it’s seriously gnarly.

Their cover of 2 Unlimited’s ‘No Limit’ simply shouldn’t work. It’s truly preposterous, audacious, and absurd. Metal covers of pop and dance tunes is old hat, predictable, corny… and yet they overcome all of this to conclude the EP with a ballsy, over-the-top take on a dance-pop song that’s as maligned as it was successful. This version’s not going to be making number one in a hundred countries around the world or filling dancefloors in perpetuity, but credit to GURT for the inspired choice. And now ‘party doom’ makes sense. Get on down, motherfuckers!

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Codex Serafini / Amon Acid / Sunbreather – Santiago’s Bar, Leeds, 26th April 2026

Posted: 27 April 2026 in Live, Reviews
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Christopher Nosnibor

Situated in a retail arcade in Leeds city centre, Santiago’s is a hip but alternative bar (in that it’s £6+ a pint of keg, and they play Nirvana and have band posters on the walls – although they also include rather less obvious bands like OFF! and Cerebral Ballzy) downstairs, and somewhat contrastingly, a poky dive with a capacity of maybe 80, accessed via a rickety staircase and with a stage that’s barely six inches high, upstairs. Said upstairs room affords an unusual view of the streets outside through a large arched window which occupies the entire wall beside the stage. Seeing people and traffic moving around on the street below while the bands perform seems a strange juxtaposition, and with the limited lighting inside the venue, the interior starts unusually bright and grows progressively darker as the night progresses.

Sunbreather’s name may suggest something a bit hippyish, and in some respects, it’s not unrepresentative. They play doom heavily influenced by what in the 70s was heavy metal: that is to say, big Sabbath- style riffs. They play them with a certain swing, too, which is refreshing, and it’s nicely done. They close their four-song set with a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’, stripped back and heavy. The coda is played with the classic bassline at half-pace, with all the weight, and the wild guitar solo replaced by thunderous chords until the very end. It’s an inspired interpretation that works well, and isn’t out of place with the rest of the set.

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Sunbreather

Amon Acid are all about the flares and hair and lace and shades, and if the name sounds like something of a giveaway, then you’d be close enough: their thing is epic stoner doom with the deep infusion of psychedelia. The vocals are low in the mix, bathed in galactic-scale reverb and delay for good measure. The two guitars melt into one another, and while they may not be masters of innovation, they clearly know what they’re doing – and thankfully, the sound engineer has a handle on it, too. Winding up with a mammoth space rock groove, which skims out for an eternity, brings the set to a searing finale. And the longer they play, the hotter it gets. By the end of their set, we’ve all liquefied, and I find myself deliberating whether I need another £6.70 pint of am ok with the prospect of dehydrating.

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Amon Acid

While I’m deliberating, they put the fans on around the room. Meanwhile, some pissed-up cokehead cunt in an orange t-shirt who seemingly thinks he’s at a rave is going off his nut and trying to get onstage while Codex Serafini are setting up, and five minutes before they’re due on I get a sinking feeling and am hoping he’ll be leaving very soon. Mercifully, I realise around a third of the way through the set that he’d fucked off, hopefully his exuberance overtaken by a melted brain.

Codex Serafini are indeed brain-melting, after all. They’re a band I’ve been waiting to see for some time, and given the enormity of their music, the intimate nature of the venue is something of a surprise on some respects. But jazz-infused doom with a punk edge is pretty niche, and an act with albums released on Riot Season are never going to be playing anywhere huge. But this is precisely why we need small venues, and labels like Riot Season. And for all that, they definitely deserve a wider audience: when novelty acts like Angine de Poitrine are racking up millions of views, it’s apparent that the public aren’t averse to stuff that’s different or weird – in fact, they’re drawn to it. Especially when there are outfits and masks involved, as the popularity of Slipknot, Ghost, and Sleep Token (who aren’t nearly as weird as their presentation would suggest) – which means that it mostly comes down to PR. The fact of the matter is that ‘viral’ is almost never ‘organic’. And so here we have Codex Serafini, in red robes and tasselled face-masks, wrapped in Saturnian lore, merging metal, jazz, and post-punk, and this is what the music world needs right now, if only people would realise.

The first half of their ten-song set consists of material from their most recent album, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, released last November. ‘Cause and Effect’ is an early standout for its deft, vaguely disco-hued drumming and almost funk-tinged groove. Matt McCartney’s bass doubles as rhythm guitar, the incidental melodies and atmosphere brought by the sax. And all the while, the percussion is cataclysmic and the vocals nothing short of other-worldly.

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Codex Serafini

‘Cronus’, ‘Janus’, and ‘Fountains of Enceladus’ are performed back-to-back in the sequence they appeared on Serpents of Enceladus, and Landing as the penultimate song of the set, ‘I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust’ is the sole representation of previous album The Imprecation Of Anima (2023).

At around fifty minutes in duration, their set is intense and sonically immense, filling the space with cathedrals of sound. It’s the last night of the tour in support of Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, and the Leeds reception sees it end on a high. And on a personal level, they were more than worth the wait. Would see again. Many times.

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