So another night in Cardiff for yet another cavalcade of bands. This time the headliners were Gibraltar biggest (only?) heavy metal band Breed 77. So with the lights going down it was time to start:
Seven Deadly
Many long-time readers will know about my affinity with Seven Deadly and their previous incarnation as Panic Cell. I was happy to see that they have changed very little since I saw their debut gig in the same venue but they have seemed to gained a lot more confidence as a cohesive unit with all the members playing with total skill, professionalism but most of all passion. In fact guitarist H got so passionate he broke the strings off his guitar Joey De Maio style. Bobby and Rob's rhythm section was hard and heavy, the guitars were rounded out by Dave Irving who also provides some good facial expressions and backing vocals, one of the keys to the bands appeal are the excellent vocals of Archie who seamlessly blends screams and clean vocals and is an extremely affable and laid back frontman. The set was a short one but it featured the hard hitting modern metal from their debut and ended with the awesome From This Darkness which is the best Killswitch Engage song they have never written. A great start to the night, just a full length now please! 8/10
For The Imperium
Hailing from Helsinki, For The Imperium play metal with an avant-garde tendency apparently, well form what I saw and heard the band were a mix of Korn style Nu-metal mixed with pop-punk. As I find Korn extremely boring musically (my opinion) and I'm not a huge pop-punk fan either, For The Imperium really didn't do it for me at all. While they were very boisterous and presented a very good live spectacle with lots of energy musically they were not my cup of tea. 5/10
Left Unscarred
Metalcore is probably one of the most divisive genres in music, for every great band there are in this genre there are also hundreds of crap ones and unfortunately Left Unscarred fall in to this category. The band played middle of the road, meat and potatoes, metalcore that for me lacked any style to set it apart from any other band. There was just trudging riffs and some long winded breakdowns, Left Unscarred just left me with an overarching sense of 'meh' I'm afraid. 4/10
Breed 77
Luckily they were followed by the excellent Breed 77 who have been honing their craft since the early 2000's but have yet to ascend to any major heights, due to a lot of management troubles. After coming back from the brink with the great Insects the band are now touring new album The Evil Inside. Only Breed could open the proceeding with a new song called Drown before going into the classic Blind which was followed by another newie Looking For Myself. Breed 77 were on fire with the new stuff being welcomed like classics and causing massive amounts of jumping, moshing and headbanging. This may have been because Breed were playing to a hardcore, partisan but small crowd, the explanation for this was that Cancer Bats were playing in the University. However Breed played like their lives depended on it with Battle Of Hatin causing a very strong pit. The instrumentation was excellent with the mix of metal and Latin still inspiring to watch however Breed's ace in the pack is the totally unique voice of Paul Isola who commands the stage perfectly and has one of the best voices in metal. Things took a sing along turn in middle of the set with a heavy cover of Alice Cooper's Poison thrown in before two new ones and the end of the set with two classics in the form of Insects and La Ultima Hora mixed with new song Low. The band returned for the encore of the mellow The River before trying to destroy the venue with their cover of The Cranberries' Zombie. Breed 77's new tracks were very good and I look forward to listening to the album but they showed tonight why they are such a great live band, catch them when they come again. 8/10
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