It’s a very chilly winter’s night as we arrive at Stylus in Leeds for a triple bill of cutting edge metalcore, but we have a feeling that the heat inside is getting turned right up!
Californian natives, Kingdom Of Giants treat us to catchy anthemic metalcore with weapons grade breakdowns and a soaring twin vocal attack. Fans of Wage War will find an abundance to love here.
We Come As Romans turn up to get us directly into bouncing party mode! This is a hyper-colour take on maximal metalcore, full to bursting with boundless energy. Touches of electronica infiltrate the assault with David Stephens vocals soaring on those big choruses, a large portion of the crowd delight the band by singing those hooks straight back at them, ‘Black hole’ and a seismic, ‘Daggers’ in particular elicit a huge response from their faithful.
But tonight is all about Bury Tomorrow, these local (ish) lads have had a huge 2023 and this sell out tour puts a ribbon on that. Straight from the get-go, the sextet brings us a masterclass in how this is done! Peeling off, ‘Abandon Us’, ‘Seventh Son’ and ‘Man On Fire’ like their lives depend on it. This Leeds show feels like a homecoming celebration for this wrecking crew, and they are in blistering form!
Daniel Winter-Bates sounding utterly huge, making keyboardist and clean vocalist, Tom Prendergast the perfect foil for the brutality on display. This is utterly state of the art metal. Bury Tomorrow look and sound like the best metal export in Britain tonight!! ‘Life’ sounds utterly giant and you can forget how many bullets the band have in their arsenal! ‘Black Flame’ follows, and the security certainly have their work cut out. ‘Heretic’ just rages!
Daniel tells the throng they’re eschewing the walk off, walk on, fiasco of the encore because it’s daft (we wholeheartedly agree) and they end the night with ‘Death’ and Leeds loses their shit one last time! Glorious! That was incredible, 2024 now has to follow that. Good luck!
Review & Images By George Miller – https://linktr.ee/601music
Kingdom Of Giants
We Come As Romans
Bury Tomorrow
