Halloween – the one time of the year where everyone and anyone can celebrate all things macabre, dress up inappropriately and get away with it, and sales for vials of fake blood skyrocket more so than any other time of the year. Unless of course you happen to be at Kentish Town Forum in London on this evening, where something disgustingly brutal lurks within the confines of this 2,100 capacity venue. For on this gruesome evening can only be accompanied by a visit by one of the most controversial, brutal, and hideously heavy metal bands of all time, Cannibal Corpse!
The crowd for this evening’s celebrations are exceptionally on form tonight, which they harness an energetic momentum which only seems to escalate by the hour. So it would seem fitting that the first support band of the night – Swedish death metal titans Aeon, start the proceedings with a hellacious bang, with their skull crushing onslaught which gets the crowd moving at an alarming rate.
This is then followed by the ever-rising Boston, MA based metal crew Revocation, whose 80’s thrash and hardcore inspired death metal takes things up a notch further with their lively stage presence, with the crowd loving the new material from their brilliant new album ‘Deathless’.
But tonight is just well and truly owned in every way by the sonically empowering Cannibal Corpse, who are touring in support of their most recent album A Skeletal Domain. As technically gifted, and as heavy as they ever have been, Cannibal Corpse just manage to elevate from strength to strength both on record and in the live environment.
Kicking things off with ‘Staring Through The Eyes Of The Dead’, it is immediately clear from the get go that this audience are letting themselves in for what looks like a real bloodbath out in the pit! Cannibal Corpse display a truly solid and impressive array of showmanship, and it is truly a wonderful thing to see their legacy is still as strong as it was back in their 90’s heyday. Even with the handful of newer songs such as ‘Kill Or Become’, the reception the new material gets from the crowd is just as welcomed with open arms as is the inclusion of their other classic tunes they perform tonight.
But when Cannibal Corpse come back for the final conclusion of the evening, vocalist George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher introduces fan favourites ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ and set climax ‘Devoured By Vermin’ with his demonic gutteral growl, which sends the crowd in to a chaotic frenzy – and leaves the grounds of the venue with a mix of blood, sweat, and beers staining the surface.
Whilst at times it could have been argued to some uneducated folks that you could not have told the difference as to what song was being played (due to the songs perhaps sounding the same), that does not matter. Because every band who played tonight individually displayed a unique form of musicianship and commitment that just cannot be replicated, so how the hell can you really fault them? Halloween does not get any bloodier than this. Long live death metal!
