It seems during the dramatic full stop that was lockdown, we seem to have reassessed our relationship with live music and we have realised that we potentially took it for granted. Three years ago, in those heady pre-covid times, I saw Decapitated in a barely quarter full Academy 3 (the smallest of the Academy venues). Tonight, the Bread Shed, a venue around the same size, is sold out, as have been most of the other shows on their elongated trip around the UK. It is if that hiatus has made us realise what is important, which is to actually get out there and support the bands we profess to love. Touring is the only way that acts make money in this new all-streaming no-purchase world and tonight’s capacity crowd shows that the message of see them or lose them is getting through.

Openers Where Oceans Burn are local lads, sadly style wise they seem to be a smooth peg trying to be shoved into a rough jagged hole. Theirs is that emotive type of metalcore, full of fragile lows and then big sweeping up-tempo highs. For me, it just doesn’t land right tonight, especially as they are propping up a bill of primal caustic heaviness. They seem good at what they do (even if later tracks seem to have wholesale nicked The Architects playbook) and it is obvious that Ross is a fucking amazing guitarist, but overall they seem out of synch with the rest of the evening.

On the other hand, Harbinger don’t just bring the heaviness, they send it crashing through the venue like some possessed wrecking ball. To say that they are on fire would be guilty of gross understatement. They just explode off the stage in a flurry of growling riffs and screamed choruses. This is deathcore filtered through Lamb of God and enhanced with thrash’s velocity. Everything happens at hundred miles an hour. There is no space for slow bits or introspective breakdowns, Harbinger just accelerate from first song to the last. They use the space afforded to them to highly effectively wipe up the crowd. The pit, which was a sparse two person affair for Where the Oceans Burn, is now a seething cauldron of limbs and flesh. They are responding to a band that just seems to be in absolute ecstasy about being back in the fray. Absolutely cracking.

Unlike some of the other occupants of ROCKFLESH Towers I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of all varieties of lesser spotted American deathcore. I could spot a wild Lorna shore or a nesting Job for a Cowboy but that is about it. Therefore, Signs of the Swarm are an unknown quantity to me. So, my initial and overriding reaction is, “Fuck Me they are good”. This is unfiltered and unrefined deathcore, a swirling maelstrom of Tattoos and Sweat. The technicality that at the heart of Harbinger and the headliners is here replaced by sheer audacity and self-will. What Signs of the Swarm do is primal, minimalistic and guttural and that is the point. Deathcore that is this granular appeals to your base instincts. It bypasses the brain and appeals to those more simplistic pleasure centres that essentially just want to fling themselves around a room. They are coarse, brutal and just bloody brilliant.

Decapitated are celebrating twenty-five of cutting edge death metal, however they decided to start very much in the present with brand new track ‘Cancer Culture’. It is a bold and assured move, and it doesn’t quite work. Yes, many of us have heard it on Spotify but it isn’t ingrained in our DNA yet like their earlier stuff. Therefore, the opening feels a little muted as the crowd fail to go completely crazy for track that too many of us are unfamiliar with. This is rectified as soon as ‘Pest’ is rolled out and the place utterly explodes. Bodies fly and arms and voices are raised aloof as we as one scream the words back at Rafal.

To celebrate a quarter of a century this is very much greatest hits set and all eight albums (including the incoming “Cancer Culture”) are visited. Whilst other bands have altered their sound and evolved in style over the years, this dash through twenty-two years of recorded material proves that Decapitated’s biggest virtue has been consistency. They seem to have arrived in 1997 fully formed and technically proficient and have maintained that over the years. We get five tracks from the seminal “Nihility” and all feel fresh and current. When other acts have dashed into the past, it is felt like nostalgia but tonight ‘Babylon’s Pride’ and ‘Nihility’ (Anti-Human Manifesto) come across as ultra-relevant and very much in tune with where death metal is today. It is not that they haven’t aged, it is that current trends are still trying to catch up to where Decapitated were twenty years ago. 

Rafal maybe be on the mike but Decapitated is very much Vogg’s band. It is his crunching riffs that embed all that they do and it is his vision that has kept the band going through numerous adversities. He interacts with the crowd as much as Rafal does and comes across as genuinely humbled by the fact that we are here in force, feeding off the music he has written. There is no encore, instead they go right back to the beginning with the oldest track unveiled tonight. Namely ‘Nine Steps’ from debut “Winds of Creation”. This is as about as unfiltered and elemental as Decapitated get and the furiosity of the pit is ratcheted up another few notches. Then there are bows, vows to return and they are gone. If lockdown has had its benefits, it indeed has made the heart grow fonder. Pre-covid Decapitated were a band trying to re-find their relevance in modern metal, however tonight proves that they have got over that blip and they are now elder statesmen equally worshipped and revered. “Cancer Culture’s” release can’t come quick enough.