Artist: Sylosis
Support: Devil Sold His Soul, Colours To Shame
Venue: Ivory Blacks, Glasgow
Date: 26/01/2013
UK metal is kind of a mixed bag. You’re stuck with bands going for their own take on traditionally established styles and you’ve a few trying something new. Those are both good things, the sad thing is how Americanised the UK metal scene has become to the extent that it can be hard to tell home grown talent from our friends across the pond. Maybe that’s not really a bad thing but unlike the European side of the metal scene, well known for incorporation of other musical styles among their heavy influences, the UK bands are suffering to an extent from predictability. Luckily enough tonight all of the bands were predictably good.
Colours to Shame are home town openers who pedal a brand of aggressive and technical metal inspired by the recent resurgence of technical and progressive heavy music. There’s nothing to reinvent the wheel here, and they still suffer a bit from parts-over-songs syndrome but the band sound great and play great. They focus much more on being tight and instrumentally impressive than they do on being a visually engaging show but judging by an increasingly positive response as their set rolled on, the band earned some new fans tonight.
Devil Sold His Soul suffer tonight. They’re a pretty vocally focused band without a vocalist as he’s ill. It doesn’t stop them being earth shatteringly heavy and still pretty brilliant though. It’s strange to hear them traveling through their trademark quiet to loud dynamics without the visceral screams or soaring melodies but on this occasion it forces you to realise that the band have often been underestimated on a instrumental level. The band’s cinematic light show adds another level of texture to their performance that also helps to make up for them being a man down. Devil Sold His Soul have definitely played better shows but they rose to the challenge in tremendous fashion. Besides, a bad Devil Sold His Soul show is still better than most bands out there on their best day. Again the fact they were support and not headlining is mind boggling.
Sylosis mine that aforementioned stream of taking your own approach to traditional metal. They’re all speedy tempos, tight aggression, wailing solos and half time grooves. Something that the crowd tonight are all too willing to lap up, often from the stage itself as they continuously crowd surf throughout. The band’s approach is a bit single minded but then again that’s kind of the point. They deliver sharp and tight contemporary metal time and time again and clearly they love it. Much like Colours To Shame the band aren’t that engaging visually, a necessary side effect of having a singer guitarist in a reasonably technical band, but the crowd are so busy head banging themselves they probably didn’t notice. As such the band’s organic growth from strength to strength seems unavoidable. Which is no bad thing for such a hard working band who are damn good at what they do. But when there are bands playing fields a bit more creative deep within the UK’s talent flooded underground it does seem a shame that they can’t do just as well as Sylosis can.
8/10
Reviewer: Calum McMillan
