Thursday in Bristol with three of the best atmospheric/melodic black metal bands around? Yeah that'll do!
Especially when two them are great friends of MoM and the headliner are a band who's new album is not only brilliant but a band who have been at the forefront of their style for years now. I haven't been to the Exchange for a while now but it's still a great little venue in the middle of Bristol, yes ok it's weirdly shaped meaning that when it's full, it's FULL and on this bitterly cold Thursday it was full from the beginning.
That beginning was dictated by South West based band Cistvaen, only getting the chance to impress in 30 minutes, it was a tight set due to their elongated song lengths. Driven by heavy bass of James, which was a little too high in the mix, at the beginning. Their sky gazing black metal was more towards the atmospheric side than the other bands on the bill their style of black metal drags in sludge, shoegaze and a few other sounds that kept the attention from the beginning of the show.
James is joined in the rhythm section by Ed on drums, they control the tempo and pace of these monolithic cuts, Guy's growls delivered in his trademark relaxed style. Mark and Lee shift between trem picking and single chord stabs, Lee bringing the moments of ambient clean guitars. I'd not seen Cistvaen for a while but they again made an impression with their kaleidoscopic atmospheric black metal.
Up next was Ofnus, a band we've seen grow from their earliest inception here at MoM Towers and one that promises to get bigger again when their new album is released at the end of this month.
This current set, well the one from Bristol has new tracks from Valediction alongside some from their debut Time Held Me Grey And Dying. As the kicked off with The Shattering, a single that hadn't long been released I noted that the new songs just sound huge on stage, more complexity but more accessible to anyone not always enamoured by the black metal genre
As The Shattering got their set going from my vantage point at the back of the room you could see the faces of the crowd change, Cistvaen were ethereal and otherworldly, the headliners folksy and Celtic flavoured. Ofnus are visceral, primal in their grief driven atmospheric black metal where and unrelenting blast of extremity can be derailed by pinched clean guitars or a moment of doom metal moodiness. .
Ethan's drums get a battering throughout the set, he's magnificent to watch and listen too behind the kit, he puts so much power behind his percussion that the drum pedals couldn't cope and fell apart before the climax of A Thousand Lifetimes but more on that later.
Into Throes Of Agony, vocalist Will embracing the title through cathartic screams, his vocals improve with each show, getting more nuanced but impassioned with every show they play. He's also got his frontman patter down too, handling the silence when they had to fix things towards the end of the show.
That's not to say the rest of the band hide in anyway, Rich's bass is technical and grooving in tandem with Alyn's ferocious rhythm playing. When Ofnus play live it leads to counterpointed or conflicting riffs between them and lead guitarist James.
It's all part of the evolution of Ofnus, what started as a project from members of the South Wales metal scene has rapidly become a must watch live act no matter where they go. The room was short of breath during the full blast moment at the end of Zenith Dolour, the lightning fast battery ultimately causing the drum issue.
This show would be hard to follow but the crowd were here for Saor, and the Scottish 'Caledonian Metal' band managed to cram their six members on stage ready to play their set in support of latest album Amidst The Ruins. Led by Andy Marshall, this show was the second on their album tour, having started in their native Glasgow with the album release show, Marshall plays bass and of course provides the harsh vocals flanked by two guitarists, who weaved between each other, with black metal riffs and fluid almost power metal leads.
Behind them there was a drummer who galloped through the moorlands and mountains for Scotland, these Celtic flavours coming mainly from multi-instrumentalist Ella Zlotos who adds the Uillean Pipes and flute to further add the cinematic approach of Saor's music. As they started the set with the title track from the new album, they remained firmly in the present with nearly all of the songs coming from Amidst The Ruins.
This meant we got blasts of ferocious melodic black metal, that segued into the folk and symphonic sections, it all blends well, seamlessly transitioning from one to the other. Andy in fine voice as he tells the tales for his countries' rugged but mystical landscape, the contrast between the styles reflecting, the changing topography of Scotland as a whole.
The real treat though is through the wind instrumentation, the pipes and flutes are all part of the musical tradition of Scotland, when these elements take the lead on tracks such as Glen Of Sorrow the audience were their most animated, I've not seen this much jigging at a black metal concert in a few years and this often miserable fan base were smiling and bobbing rather than sobbing.
Saor get it, the blastbeats, the trem picking and the growls only get you so far there has to be something else, black metal as a genre has evolved, with Cistvaen it's a post metal sheen, Ofnus atmospheric dissonance and with Saor they opt for the cinematic, long pieces split into musical movements meaning that by Aura Bristol had witnessed brilliance from these invading Scots.
The UK atmospheric/melodic black metal scene is alive and well and while it's maybe not always trve cvlt it can sometimes hit harder than any rumination on anti-Christian sentiment. A true joy of an evening, of you like your extreme metal with something more. 9/10
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