Slowhole, Moloch & Fatalist - Boom, Leeds, 11.04.26
Manchester trio Fatalist (7) play a kind of metallic post-hardcore that's direct, insistent and alive with tension. Bass player Mat Smith grips the neck of his guitar like he's trying to rein in something that's almost out of control, a wide-legged stance with one foot anchoring the mic stand to prevent it being blasted away by his livid screaming. Drummer Phil Giles punctures the songs with vertiginous rolls that introduce a welcome shade of abstraction. Mid-set, one song seems to momentarily fracture and splinter before recoalescing around it's purpose.
Although pretty quiet over the last few years, Nottingham sludgy doom quartet Moloch (9) are coming up on their 20 year anniversary. Despite their lengthy hiatus, they're still one of the best bands in the country and yet remain criminally overlooked outside the close knit DIY community. Just released third album Bend.Break.Kneel.Crawl is another howl of screaming guitars and anguished vocals and proves the band has lost none of its potency since the previous album in 2018. The bands music possesses a formidable forward propulsion that's full of weighty foreboding, and it all seems to be channelled through and out of singer Chris Braddock's wide eyed stare and shredded throaty screams. The quieter passages only serve to amplify the crushing power of the noise when it resumes. Magnificent.
If you navigate music by genre, New Orleans quintet Slowhole (8) may present a few problems. All the songs are set against a backdrop of relentless feedback and effects noise from guitarists Dante Galliano and David Hunter. The individual songs generally proceed at a slow grinding pace, occasionally erupting into brief bursts of frantic thrashing, with vocalist Shannon Arsenault's treated shrieking adding a human element to the noise, although it's impossible to tell what she may be singing about. The anguish and turmoil in the voice may need to be enough.
The band perform in near darkness and don't move around much, so there's not much of a visual stimulus to provide a focus. As far as the music is concerned though, if you need reference points, try mashing together the slowcore of French doomsters Monarch, pure unhinged harsh noise, and the occasional dollop of hardcore velocity. Although it's hard to get a handle on what's going on half the time, the band clearly know what they're doing.
Mid-set a guitarist breaks a string, leaves the stage to get a replacement and calmly restrings and retunes, while the rest of the band equally calmly fill in with an improvisation that manages to fit seamlessly with what came before and what comes after. Although I spent most of the set trying to figure out was was going on, there's no doubt that just now this band have got hold of something that's startlingly different, and seeing Slowhole again at the next available opportunity would be a no-brainer.
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