On a wet and windy Wednesday night, the unassuming Student’s Union bar at the Manchester 2 is flooded with devoted death metal fans embarking on a peculiar pilgrimage. Positioned in a dimly lit room tucked away up a staircase and around a forgotten corner; Dying Fetus lead the charge on this unruly bill, with Salt Lake City’s Chelsea Grin, deathcore collective Despised Icon, and opener Vitriol. Before the show, the PA system pulsates out strictly cheesy dance and disco, the bass reverberating, tantalising the crowd with what’s to come. The excitement is infectious; a legion of black shirts emblazoned with scrawled, hard-to-decipher names, the echoes of the genre’s underbelly, dancing to Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’, a fitting prelude to the chaos about to unfold.
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