arcturus-london-show-posterYes this line-up does look a slightly odd mix on paper. What happened was this was meant to be two shows with Arcturus, Vulture Industries and Krakow playing upstairs at the much bigger Dome venue. Ticket sales, no doubt due to the impending Incineration Festival, were not as good as anticipated resulting in the two tours being combined into the Boston Music room downstairs. This had both good and bad points as I will get to later. It also meant a very early start with Krakow well into the swing of things as I got to the venue to join a few punters there for the start of things. The Norwegians are busy chugging away with loose riffs filling the place as they groove away with more red lighting than a brothel bathing them in a blood red hue. The vocalist bass player Frode is facing the drummer and as he turns around I was amused to see he was wearing a Wu Tang shirt with the sleeves cut off exactly the same as one I own. So we have a band with players in bands such as Aeternus and Kampfar playing progressive, post, stoner rock clad in gangster rap apparel. As they jam away it’s obvious that indeed they aint nothing to fuck with. Scrub mention of vocals these are in very short supply but when we do get a burst of them they are suitably gruff and grizzled and strike as very much incidental. Krakow are more about building up big slabs of hefty riffs which is something they do admirably from what I caught, even if that was only a couple of tracks.

Italians Caronte are not a band I know but thankfully I knew what to expect due to an album review on these very pages. They get busy layering out fuzzy riffs and quickly bring the doom. It’s somewhat lethargic at first with a plod heavy demeanour which I can only describe as beard stroking stuff. It gets people in the filling up venue comfortably nodding along. Heavily tattooed singer Dorian Bones also in Whisky Ritual leads very much from the front and gives things a very traditional flavour with harmonious croons and as they speed things up and get more of a stomp on the energy increases with both the vocals going up a notch and some Hawkwind sounding guitar flurries peppering things. Some almost spoken word parts gives it a sense of ceremony as the players contort themselves into shapes and strum along with devotional wails going and almost hitting the roof. For my tastes it is definitely a little too traditional and unadventurous though and looking around there’s hardly much in the way of movement from the crowd apart from a bit of obligatory head nodding. I reckon this lot would have gone down fairly well supporting the likes of Grand Magus even if they would have been blown out the water by them. Half an hour was quite bearable but Caronte did little to excite me or really do much to stand out.

I expected not to like Attic having been told they owe a lot in style to a certain Mr King Diamond which they most definitely do but when Attic attack it’s hard not to be caught up in the zealous rampaging energy of it,  the Germans really do give it their all. There’s is nothing tired about this show after they dispatch with a cheesy Satanic intro and fire up their weapons and when those high pitched wails from vocalist Master Cagliosto fill the air there is absolutely no denying whose pipes he takes for inspiration, hell he even has a patch on his sleeve showing where his heart is at. The rest of the band fill up the stage and are a blur of motion within the cold blue lighting and blaze away, hair billowing and axes held aloft. This is seriously just what I would expect from a pure heavy metal show as they rampage their way through things. Despite it all, apart from some mad bangers at the front,  the audience didn’t seem sure what was happening and not surprising as many were wandering in to what they expected more to be in the avant-garde side of things. As things proceeded the infectious numbers did no doubt help get more to ‘Join The Coven’ and they definitely made new friends at this their first London show. I reckon they could be back before long too thinking they would be perfect for Live Evil Festival the singer even sports a most suitable tache! With last song The Headless Horseman seriously galloping away I have to admit I felt gorged on riffs and felt like I had just consumed an extra-large heavy metal pizza. Time for the bands I had really come to see.

It’s great to finally greet back Bergen’s Vulture Industries after a long wait since they were last here. Since then they gave us their fantastic 2013 album ‘The Tower’ one that had them straddling the perch and delivering one of my favourite albums (and videos) of that year. As they troop on stage all resplendent in gleaming white pressed shirts and soar into that particular song I close my eyes and get transported right off into the upper echelons and lofty heights of its construction. It’s actually impossible not to sing along trying to match Bjørn Nilsen’s rafter hitting croons and it’s obvious that the band are really happy to be back here practically glowing off the reaction they are getting from us at the front. In the spirit of it all and the camaraderie of things I am tempted to reach forward and ping the frontman’s braces but decide it’s a silly idea and settle for taking some photos instead. They too fill out the stage although as with the other bands the drummer is nestled aside on a small set at the edge of the stage, I can imagine the words “nobody touches Hellhammer’s kit” having been made very clear to all. Vulture Industries have us really caught in their grip as they deliriously take us into ‘The Pulse Of Bliss’. Bjorn occasionally stands on a big box and looks 20 feet tall on the stage looming over us and delivering his parts like a zany carnival barker as he waves a tambourine around. The show definitely takes on the edge of being out there at times and they really are the perfect support band for Arcturus to take on the road with them. ‘The Hound’ slows things and lounges around with us swaying along to its eccentricities and hoary croons warping our heads in the process. It has devilish mischief at its heart and the singer joining the audience on the dance-floor, even getting an impromptu conga as he moves around. All good things have to come to an end but they do so in style and a carnival crazed fashion with ‘Blood Don’t Eliogabalus’ wrapping things up in a frenzied dizzying style. Hopefully the band will be back with both a new album and a headlining show before too long.

Whereas the sound and intimacy here worked for all four bands and I am getting this out the way straight off, I really don’t think it worked in the favour of Arcturus. They are a big band in more ways than one and one who relies on rich symphonics and a swaggering display that is ideal for a bigger stage as we have seen them perform on several times in the past. They just seemed hemmed in a bit here with the room unable to cope with Hellhammer’s massive battering strength for a start making everything sound muddy and too dense. Lighting wise things needed to be a lot more bright and up front too and just occasional colour changes did the group little favours as well. That aside there was little way around this really and at least the show went on and to a very crowded room by now too. A quick look at the set-list had me salivating due to the amount of old songs on it. Sure most apart from those on the brand new album are old now but the wealth of material from favourite album La Masquerade Infernale was quickly noted. The band attack the stage like a bunch of renegade space cowboys from a post apocalyptic movie wearing whatever they have managed to salvage from the irradiated wastelands. ICS Vortex bounces around at the centre, such a jolly chap and smiling away the whole time. We try and take it all in and decipher their evacuation code which instantly had flamboyance at its heart. Knut certainly looks the part with strange futuristic looking guitar as he lives up to his name stage right and the monk robed Skoll wields his bass around to the left.

It seemed like many knew the new numbers such as ‘The Arcturian Sign’ lead song from the album. To me it really seemed like it lost subtlety along with its more techno parts with Hellhammer battering away and giving it an almost punk bombast and a brutal backbone much more extreme than it is on the disc, which I bought as soon as I got in the venue. The canvas was brought out with older artistry being represented by a glorious double whammy of ‘Painting My Horror’ and the tripped out ‘Daemon Painter’ represented back to back. Carnivalesque keyboard breaks and deranged vocals getting people singing along. I did note that moving around the venue sound was better in certain places and I stood rooted to the spot as they frenziedly burst into ‘Alone’ coasting along on the vocals which naturally had everyone yelling out the last line although oddly not ICS who left us to it. As far as the numbers are concerned there were many highlights to be found such as the bouncy ‘Chaos Path’ which went down particularly well at the front. I was a bit surprised we only got the one new number but could hardly complain with songs like ‘Master Of Disguise’ being aired instead. Playing for 75 minutes or so and stretching things well beyond 11 they finished things up with ‘Shipwrecked Frontier Pioneer’ and even if they had not played the big top but the sideshow they still gave it their all and left me feeling dizzy something that became even more confusing as the train I caught filled up with fans leaving a POD, Alien Ant Farm show down the road in Camden! How and why do these bands still exist?

(Review and photos © Pete Woods)