Source: Promo Image
Sylosis and Decapitated – veterans of early 2000’s death metal are still going strong and rising stars in the British metal scene. Perhaps not two bands that you would normally associate together, but for some reason when put next to each other, it just works.
First on of the two was Decapitated. And they were loud. Decapitated are, obviously ridiculously heavy, even the creepy intro with its weird electronic pulsing and the minimalist red lighting breaking into washes of strobe. Over the course of an hour, Decapitated played songs from one of the best back catalogues in extreme metal, covering all of their releases since their turn of the century debut release, through to Carnival Is Forever from 2014. Over an hour did feel a little bit too long to be faced with that much heaviness at that volume, but the fans who were unfazed by this really didn’t give a shit.
It was slightly unfortunate that to begin with there was little in the way of movement, both from crowd and band, but eventually the crowd was unable to ignore the raw aggression being pounded into them at worryingly high decibels, and when the crowd began to move more so did the band. Frontman Rafał “Rasta” Piotrowski was somewhat reserved in his between-song crowd interaction, only stopping once or twice to talk to us, whether it be due to him not speaking his native language or simply because Decapitated wanted to fit as many blistering songs into their set as possible, who knows.
Following a show as out-and-out brilliant as Decapitated seemed like a tall order for Sylosis. Josh Middleton has always been an excellent guitar player and vocalist but hasn’t always been great at being a frontman – someone to focus on and to put on a show.
This was absolutely destroyed at Rescue Rooms. Josh is finally starting to find his confidence as a frontman; throwing himself around, gurning, headbanging during the instrumental parts, shouting at the crowd, issuing commands and just having more fun with it. Sylosis have always had the songs to make watching them live good – now they are starting to get the show there as well.
Even though they seemed to play a shorter set than Decapitated, Sylosis were no less brilliant, and also covered songs from their entire discography, even new song ‘Different Masks On The Same Face’ fit right in with tracks as massive as ‘Leech’ and ‘Mercy’.
Sylosis are clearly on an upward curve in terms of albums, it was always the live show that let them down slightly. If they can continue the level of improvement they’ve shown between this and Download last year, Sylosis are going to be right up there with the best of the younger British metal scene.
