Live Review : Slaughter To Prevail + Dying Fetus + Suicide Silence + Annotations Of An Autopsy @ O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester on January 17th 2026

Rock 'n' roll is founded on controversy. From Elvis swinging his hips in a sexualised manner, through the Beatles declaring themselves to be bigger than Jesus, the Sex Pistols dropping the F-bomb on prime-time telly and onto Ozzy urinating on the Alamo while wearing one of Sharon's dresses. One of its fundamental tenets is to cause the generation before it to look at their children and say, “don’t grow up like that”. The latest in a long line of controversial acts to shake the moral fibre of the nation are Russian/British deathcore agitators Slaughter to Prevail.

Live Review : Paleface Swiss + Static Dress + Stick To Your Guns @ Academy, Manchester on January 15th 2026

What we have tonight is less a straightforward bill and more a kaleidoscope of alternative and melodic hardcore, each band bending the genre to their own will. Tonight is less about genre purity and more about evolution. Stick To Your Guns remind us of the roots, of the communal spirit of hardcore. Static Dress show us what happens when you twist those roots into something chaotic and dangerous. And Paleface Swiss prove that deathcore can be accessible, commanding, and even mainstream without losing its bite.

Live Review : Born Of Osiris + Within Destruction + Aversions Crown + Larcenia Roe @ Academy 3, Manchester on January 13th 2026

We are now into the second week of 2026 and we are very much back to business as usual. We start the year in many ways as we ended it with an extremely tasty quadruple bill that illustrates the array of different flavours and textures currently available within extreme music. All four bands represented here this evening in some way galvanise around what we know as death metal, but all four bands come to this musical mecca from incredibly different directions. It is like watching four distinctly diverse interpretations of the same play. There is a shared DNA, but the shells it is housed within are remarkably different.

Live Review : Clutch + 1000mods + Bokassa @ Academy, Manchester on December 19th 2025

Clutch have happily given us a Christmas treat, delivering their bluesy heavy-rock metal to a packed Manchester Academy. They always serve up a fantastic live show with their unique and infectious performance and endless catalogue of songs. Tonight they’ve also brought the brilliant Greek rockers 1000mods and unhinged Norwegian stoner-punks Bokassa along for the ride!

Live Review : Swallow The Sun + Saturnus + Opia @ Rebellion, Manchester on December 16th 2025

There is a divine beauty in darkness. In the shrouded bleakness, if you look hard enough, you will always find hope, redemption, and immaculate splendour. For respectively thirty-four and twenty-five years, Saturnus and Swallow The Sun have been mining the melancholic gloom for the glimmers of positivity. They both operate in a corner of the doom metal universe that is melodic and tinged with sadness as opposed to sadism. It is doom metal in the fact that it is slow and pendulous in its delivery, but it has an emotive and poignant core, focusing on affairs of the heart instead of the more fanciful and fantastic.

Live Review : Of Mice & Men + Ghøstkid + Gore. @ Academy 2, Manchester on December 12th 2025

There’s something intriguing and exciting about a lineup that covers all the stages of the journey of a band. Openers Gore. are at the start of their journey, complete with enthusiasm, vigour and wide-eyed energy. Main support Ghøstkid are looking to push on, building to the next level from their strong foundations. And then headliners Of Mice & Men are maintaining their grip on success and establishing their legacy.

Live Review : Three Days Grace + Badflower @ O2 Apollo, Manchester on December 12th 2025

Three Days Grace, are the true definition of cult heroes. They may well have shifted 10 million albums and singles worldwide but outside of the close-knit community that they have built, you would be hard pressed to point them out in a police line-up. The fan base is rabid, reverential and fiercely loyal but beyond those confines, they are at best also-rans and at worst a poor person’s Nickelback. Within that close fraternity of evangelical followers tonight is akin to a form of second coming. This is their first show in this city since they reunited with original singer Adam Gontier.

Gig ReviewAuthor : Ryan Hickson14 December 2025O2 ApolloThree Days Grace, Badflower, O2 Apollo, Manchester, 2025, Live Review, Ryan HicksonComment

Live Review : Crobot + Ingénue + Lute @ The Deaf Institute, Manchester on December 10th 2025

How do you get more intimate than the sweat box that is The Deaf Institute upstairs room? The answer is plain and simple, you can move the whole shebang downstairs into the main pub. This evening's event has the feel of having a band play your Nan’s front room. It's claustrophobic, in places it is shambolic, and you're not going to find any self-respecting cat getting itself swung round this place. But it embodies the true spirit of rock n‘ roll. You can take your arenas, you can take your Apollo's and you can shove your Academies up whatever orifice you fancy; this is where our music thrives, this is its foundry and this is its source.

Live Review : Loathe + Zetra + Love Is Noise @ Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool on December 4th 2025

Liverpool’s much loved Deftones-esque post-rock metallers Loathe have returned home for a gig on the dockside and the queue is around the corner at opening. It’s an eagerly anticipated gig for sure, and for us at ROCKFLESH it’s the first chance in a while to catch them as they continue their rise in the scene.

Live Review : Katatonia + Evergrey + Klogr @ Academy 2, Manchester on December 7th 2025

The departure in May of founding Katatonia member Anders Nyström felt both inevitable and cryptically timed. It arrived shortly after the exit of the other remaining founding member Jonas Renkse’s from their death metal side project Bloodbath and on the eve of the release of the band’s 13th studio effort. With the recruitment of Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland into the ranks to replace the departing Nyström and Roger Ojersson, “Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State” simultaneously cemented Katatonia’s position as doom metal for those with PhDs and stuck a ruddy great red line between the modern incarnation of the band and their previous death doom leanings.

Gig ReviewAuthor : Stewart Lucas8 December 2025Academy 2Katatonia, Evergrey, Klogr, Academy 2, Manchester, 2025, Live ReviewComment

Live Review : Bad Omens + Bilmuri + The Ghost Inside @ Live Co-op Arena, Manchester on November 28th 2025

For anyone still bemoaning the lack of a new generation of festival headliners they should get a load of the rapid ascent of Bad Omens. In a little over eight years they have accelerated from Satan's Hollow, via the Ritz to command the cavernous enormity of the Co-op Arena. As Noah will confess latter on, they are 500 tickets of selling out the place. Bad Omens have achieved this feat by winning over a fanbase of fresh blood devotees, enticed by their emotive brand of metal.

Live Review : LLNN + Pupil Slicer + Worn Out @ Rebellion, Manchester on November 27th 2025

Three bands, three different shades of extremity, one unforgettable night. From Worn Out’s hardcore ferocity to Pupil Slicer’s avant-garde chaos and LLNN’s sludgy soundscape nightmares. Three radically different approaches to metal and a Thursday night Rebellion crowd ready to lap it up or let it obliterate them trying.

Live Review : Conan + Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean @ Rebellion, Manchester on November 26th 2025

If you strip metal back to its molten core, you will find Conan. They synthesise the base element of ungodly weight that makes metal, metal and celebrate the simplistic beauty of that gnarly heaviness. There is something ritualistic and primal about their approach; by removing all the elements that have aided metal's evolution, they reboot everything to a point where it is all about the heaviness.

Live Review : Halestorm + Bloodywood + Kelsy Karter & The Heroines @ AO Arena, Manchester on November 24th 2025

There is prestige in becoming an arena-level act. It signifies a shift from making it to having made it, a sense of sustainability. It is a badge of honour to be able to fill cavernous rooms, a status symbol. It is a state of affairs that many bands aspire to, but few actually achieve. Halestorm are one of a number of acts attempting to make that jump from theatres to enormodomes. In many ways they achieve the feat unscathed and with their integrity intact.

Live Review : Svalbard + Cage Fight + Knife Bride @ Rebellion, Manchester on November 20th 2025

Svalbard may well cover unsettling subject matters, but they always had an element of joy about them. The music they choose to accompany their treaties on depression and isolation has consistently had a euphoric element to it. It uplifts as opposed to grinding down the listener. Whilst Serena Cherry cheekily welcomes us to their funeral, tonight's final performance in Manchester before they call it a day, has an air of celebration as opposed to commiseration. Serena herself is positively bouncy and comes across as being in a particularly healthy state of mind. It is obvious they are very proud of everything the band has achieved, but that they are also very aware of when to step away. As Serena declares midway through the show, “We are ending like we started, with passion in our hearts and no money in our bank accounts”.

Live Review : Volbeat + Bush + Witch Fever @ AO arena, Manchester on November 8th 2025

Bonfire night may have ostensibly passed by a couple of nights ago, but as Volbeat and co roll into Manchester’s packed AO Arena, an incendiary evening of rock (et) n’ roll fireworks seems to be all but guaranteed. Calling your latest foray around the arenas of Europe “The Greatest of all Tours” is a formidable boast but is it one that the three bands on the bill can live up to? Time will tell…

Gig ReviewAuthor : Craig Wilkinson10 November 2025AO ArenaVolbeat, Bush, Witch Fever, AO Arena, Manchester, 2025, Live Review, Craig Wilkinson, Jason SamuelsComment

Live Review : Drowning Pool + Spineshank + (hed)p.e. @ Academy 2, Manchester on November 6th 2025

Tonight’s lineup is a dive straight into the early Noughties metal scene and tonight we travel back to that era with three big hitters of that time taking to the stage in Manchester. Drowning Pool, Spineshank and (hed)pe were some of the names you’d see on all the tours, festivals and MTV. As it turns out this isn’t just a nostalgia trip - it’s a reminder of how bands evolve, survive, and sometimes…don’t quite reached the heights they once did.

Live Review : Wednesday 13 + The Soap Girls + The Nocturnal Affair @ O2 Ritz, Manchester on November 5th 2025

Like a pumpkin left on the porch, Wednesday 13 is here to provide Halloween vibes after the big day has come and gone. Now whilst Wednesday 13 may have long ago decided the UK is a lucrative market for shock horror rock 'n' roll antics, this is his third tour of this isle in twelve months and there is a distinct whiff of diminishing returns. The 1,500 capacity Ritz has shifted 350 tickets, and ...

Live Review : Lord Of The Lost + Skarlett Riot + Julien-K @ O2 Ritz, Manchester on October 31st 2025

It’s Halloween, and the ghouls are out in force in Manchester this evening. Vampires are propping up every bar, and death is definitely in the air. What better way to spend it than with a bunch of industrial goths from Germany then? Lord Of The Lost are fresh from hosting their own festival in their homeland, and it’s kind of fitting that their brooding demeanour can be enjoyed on this spookiest of evenings.

Live Review : Arch Enemy + Amorphis + Eluveitie + Gatecreeper @ O2 Apollo, Manchester on October 31st 2025

It’s Halloween, the most metal day of the year, so it is only fitting that perennial metal troopers Arch Enemy have rocked up at the Apollo with a rather impressive battalion of supports in tow. Alissa proclaims that it is her favourite time of the year and she has gone all out to impress, besuited in luminous skull face paint. The audience itself is made up of a splattering of witches, ghouls and warlocks, though most have plumped for the rather benign fancy dress of middle-aged man in band t-shirt.

Gig ReviewAuthor : Stewart Lucas1 November 2025O2 ApolloArch Enemy, Amorphis, Eluveitie, Gatecreeper, O2 Apollo, Manchester, 2025, Live ReviewComment