Death metal needs more smiles. Not snarling, serial-killer smiles – but genuine, pleased-to-be-here smiles. The latter kind were in abundance on a filthy, rainy, winter’s night at the Underworld in Camden as two bands made their UK debut and a third made a welcome return to Britain’s capital city.
There is one caveat – the bands on the bill were not pure death metal. Two would best be described with the prefix “symphonic” before the death bit, while the other had elements of folk (with 6–8 time signatures and a flautist) and power metal (soaring harmonies and shredomaniac guitar solos), as well as the requisite Cookie-Monster roars.
But the joy each brought to the room – as well as heaviosity in abundance – was fantastic to see.
Dark Oath and their extremely cheerful lead vocalist Sara Leitao set the scene. Their epic brand of symphonic death metal had the already sizeable crowd nodding their heads enthusiastically, with a significant minority straying into full neck-wrecking. They blasted through songs from their two albums, When Fire Engulfs the Earth and Ages of Man – the former a fantasy-themed record, the latter a musing on Greek mythology’s take on human existence – and the sound was incredible, even with them minus a bass player (I don’t know why there was no bass player – there is one named on their website).
But while the songs were excellent and enticed me over to their merch table to attempt to buy some music (they’d run out – this was the penultimate night of the tour) one thing struck me. After each visceral, throat-ruining turn from Leitao, she would burst into a huge grin and thank the audience profusely for showing up in numbers. “This is so much fun!” she repeated. The audience agreed. The bar had been set very high indeed.
The feel-good factor carried on for the second act, Valhalore, a six-piece (two guitars, bass, vocals, flute and drums) all the way from Queensland, Australia, who did well to all fit on the tiny Underworld stage. Valhalore’s folk-power-death-Viking sound was almost impossible not to dance to, even though the band members were somewhat restricted in their stage moves.
And again, the lead vocalist, Lachlan Neate, was effusive in his praise and gratitude to everyone there. And, from his opening “gidday London”, oh my word, was he polite. At one point, while introducing a particularly heavy number, he asked: “Do you guys know what a circle pit is? Well, this song is good for one, so I’d like to see one around that pillar [The Underworld is cursed with view-blocking pillars on the dancefloor, which hold up the pub above]. Oh, only if you want to, I am not going to force you to or anything.”
The crowd obeyed, but it didn’t last long because everyone wanted to see the spectacle on stage. A bearded lead vocalist in warpaint, a woman with deathly white make-up blowing a flute whose sound floated ethereally above the twin-guitar assault… and five people attempting to do rudimentary jigs on a stage slightly bigger than a postage stamp. Needless to say, the cheese element was just perfect. The band members were having a whale of a time, as were the audience.
And after each song, Neate would compliment the crowd with a self-effacing grin and admit: “You guys are fucking crazy.” Just like Dark Oath before them, they will have recruited a lot of new fans.
Aephenemer’s intense delivery was offset by good vibes in between songs
The act everyone had come out in the icy rain to see was France’s Aephanemer. They were touring their latest album Utopie, a brilliant collection of songs which lean more into the neo-classical and symphonic creations of chief composer and lead guitarist Martin Hamiche than previous releases.
And again, he appeared slightly overwhelmed by the reception to his dizzying solos, grinning like he had just won the school sports day. Similarly, vocalist Marion Bascoul lapped up the good vibes, and her post-song smiles and high-fives were, like Dark Oath before them, were in stark contrast to the fierce vocals in the songs. Incidentally, Bascoul’s vocal range is unconscionable. If you have heard ‘Contrepoint’ from Utopie, or ‘Le Radeau de la Meduse’ from 2021’s A Dream of Wilderness, you may have wondered whether she had performed the gravelly death growls and the operatic soars in the same take. After all, she switched between the two from bar to bar. Well, I can attest, in both songs, she did it live. It was incredible.
Aephanemer played songs from throughout their 11-year career (with too few from their 2019 masterpiece Prokopton, but that is only my opinion, because I think it is amazing) – and the tracks from Utopie were received with the greatest acclaim. The sheer bombast of the symphonic backing tracks and the intense light show meant the audience were less active than with the previous bands, but no less enthralled.
And they ended in epic fashion, with the 17-minute two-part centrepiece and title track of their latest album, followed by ‘Bloodline’, the anthemic highlight of Prokopton. The rousing riffs and gradual, extremely loud crescendo was just the finish we all wanted. And at the end, the whole band smiled, bowed and took in deafening cheers. Their expressions matched the looks on the faces of most of the people watching. It is amazing what a happy face does to a death-metal crowd.
