There is a fevered atmosphere of anticipation in the Club Academy tonight. At some point over the last year (not sure actually exactly when) Lorna Shore have become a big thing, a very very big thing indeed. This is their first UK show since their transcendence from deathcore also-rans to the genre’s leading light and you can taste the sizzle of expectation in the air. This show has been bumped up venue sizes three times and still the sold-out sign is on the door. It is quite hard to decipher what has actually clicked with the tattooed masses squeezed in here tonight and my best guess is that it is Lorna’s Shore’s heady mix of intensity and humanity. They swagger and they rage, but they do so with an utterly relatable vulnerability. However, we have two other upcoming acts to contend with first before we reach the delectable main course.

Cabal are Danish and this is their first show ever in the UK. They seem pleased as punch that their inaugural visit to these shores is greeted by a pretty full house and a pit consisting of gyrating limbs and some pretty sadistic body slamming. Their brand of deathcore is crisp, clear and almost minimalistic. There is very much a heightened level of technicality at play here, the breakdowns have room to breath and feel precession engineered. We get a short frantic set that manages to be both ferocious but also tight and taught. The extremities are achieved by the sheer weight and tenacity of the riffs as opposed to any level of scuzziness. I suspect that whilst this is their first time in the UK, it won’t be there last.

Though unfamiliar to me, Distant receive what surmounts to a hero’s welcome. The pit reverberates with flailing bodies and those pushed up against the barrier clamber to touch their idols. To counter any heathen that says deathcore all sounds the same, Distant’s take on the brand is a completely at odds to the style purloined by Cabal. This is much more hazy, dirty and downright evil variant of the sound. The riffs are contorted and blemished, full of menacing maliciousness. Distant creates a cauldron of malignant sound that is both crushing and corrosive. There are points where they remind me of a heavier The Black Dahlia Murder, but there are other points where they feel peerless. This is Deathcore at its most chaotic and primal, technicality and finesse abandoned in favour of raw primal power. The crowd lap it up, forming walls of death and swirl around in circles powered by the pure kinetic energy of rampant metal. Simply stunning.

Energy levels have reached critical breach level and we haven’t even had the headliner yet. It is clear that Lorna Shore are everybody in room’s new favourite band. The lights unexpectedly dim, and we are off. To say that the band roar out of the starting gates would be an under estimation. Their entrance makes it seem that they have been stuck behind that curtain for the last two years, just waiting for the moment that they could burst out on the stage. They look cool as fuck in black shirts and beautifully sculptured hair, to the point where their debonair attire lulls you into a false sense of security. However, any subtlety is out the window as the first refrain of ‘To the Hellfire’ hits like a ten-ton truck. This is melodic and symphonic deathcore, but there is nothing cheesy or bombastic about it. At the heart of their sound this is this fundamental meld of brutality and anthemic. The tracks are big, and they are chock full of soaring riffs, but this commerciality is juxtaposed by an unrelenting searing intensity that sends the pit into fits of ecstasy.

He may be the new boy, but Will Ramos has become Lorna Shore. He burns of the stage and his strangulated screeches could strip paint. However, he also comes across as grounded and exposed. It later comes out that he had a panic attack just before they took the stage, and that fragility is strikingly obvious. He is not an invincible rockstar, detached from his masses. Will comes across as grounded and the owner of the same set of scars and insecurities that we all possess. Truly an idol for the twenty first century. 

Lorna Shore throw out tracks like surface to air missiles. The pace goes beyond frantic and settles somewhere around supersonic. They dispense surplus energy like someone had made them stay in their own homes for the last year and a half. It is a masterclass in the utter ferocity of metal and once again illustrates the redemptive power of unbridled sound. They are hypnotic, dragging you into the gravitational pull of their pulsating mix of choral and coarseness. Therefore, it comes as a massive surprise when, as he introduces ‘This is Hell’, Will casually mentions that they have only two tracks left. This leads to a lot of watch checking and slightly bemused faces as it feels for everyone in that sweaty enclave that they have only just started. Main set closer ‘FVNERAL MOON’ ratches up the intensity, but it is during solitary encore ‘Immortal’ that it just seems to explode. In unison the, by now rapturous, crowd scream along in unison and slam joyfully into each other. It is one of those moments of communal bliss, each person experiencing their own personal piece of euphoria, but the sensation heightened by the fact it is simultaneously shared. 

And then they are gone. Joyously wonderful but far far far too short. They have three albums and four EPs to their name, so material was not the issue. The curfew was still a good thirty five minutes away, so that can’t be blamed and they had the crowd literally and figuratively eating out of the palm of their hands. Taking all that into account, the premature curtailment of the evenings proceedings just feels baffling, if not rather daft. They were really rather wonderful, and they manage to live up to (and beyond) all the hyperbole being thrown around about them. However, whilst the adage is to leave them wanting more, as a headliner, to play for less time than they will get at this summer’s Bloodstock, just feels odd. Exquisite, but as Oliver says, please sir can we have some more?