LIVE REVIEW: Rivers Of Nihil @ Slay, Glasgow March 29, 2025Elena Francis

It’s not often that progressive/technical death metal fans are catered for with a whole touring packing to suit their preferences. Tonight, the Aggressive Progressive Tour arrives in Glasgow, live at Slay. Despite this genre’s perceived lack of accessibility and reputation for senseless tech for tech’s sake, the venue is very well-attended with punters keen to digest three drastically different artist in the subgenre: RIVERS OF NIHIL, CYNIC and BEYOND CREATION.

Beyond Creation live @ Slay, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Duncan McCall

Quebec, Canada has always been a hotspot for brain-bending progressive and technical death metal, boasting a mighty roster including GORGUTS, CRYPTOPSY, MARTYR, QUO VADIS and AUGURY. Prog tech death metallers BEYOND CREATION are another worthy addition to this list. Distinct from their peers, these Quebecois focus on the progressive side more than the death metal. There’s a plethora of melodies and even emotively-dictated solos peppered among the blastbeats, chugga chugga riffs and technical noodling, especially on their last album Algorythm.

Bassist Hugo Doyon-Karout utilises meaty yet complex basslines that the crystal clear sound emphasises superbly. Growler and guitarist Simon Girard asks the crowd to start a circle pit, but the audience disobeys and continues to stand and watch. However, a second request during closer Ominipresent Perception hits the mark and produces a modest pit. This is a fantastic exhibition of the more melodic side of a typically aggro-driven subgenre.

Rating: 8/10Cynic live @ Slay, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Duncan McCall

Progressive death thrash metal legends CYNIC were actually in Glasgow exactly a year ago at Slay, so it’s a real treat to see them return so soon. These Americans begin with Nunc Fluens, driving excitement before launching into Evolutionary Sleeper. While this should be one of the highlights of their show, frontman Paul Masvidal doesn’t sing the vast majority of the song. There’s a concern that this may be an issue for the whole set. Fortunately though, during the next song, In A Multiverse Where Atoms Sing, he deploys his vo-coder vocals effortlessly (along with some taped backing vocals) and continues to sing the rest of the show.

Again, the sound is fantastic and truly invigorates this highly influential spiritually scientific take on progressive metal. Cosmic melodies, esoteric atmospherics and jazz prog acrobatics combine to create something earnest, compelling and other-wordly. It’s PINK FLOYD by Buddhist preachers in lab coats on ayahuasca. Original drummer Sean Reinert and loyal session bassist Sean Malone both sadly passed away in 2020. The music is not the same, but new drummer Matt Lynch bangs the skins in an alternative style that really compliments the style. The setlist is a fair retrospective of CYNIC‘s outstanding discography, including the likes of Infinite Shapes, Integral Birth and the gorgeous instrumental Textures. Masvidal is positioned to the far right of the stage, a visual reminder that CYNIC is more than just himself. Closing with the beloved Space For This, the audience cheers so enthusiastically that you’d think they were headlining. And, indeed, it’s a mystery why they aren’t playing last.

Rating: 8/10Rivers Of Nihil live @ Slay, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Duncan McCall

Progressive tech death headliners RIVERS OF NIHIL take the stage decked in matching red shirts and smart black waistcoats. They open with The Sub-Orbital Blues, a single from their yet-to-be-released self-titled album due in May. Guitarist Andy Thomas uses clean vocals on this song, but tonight they sound strained and out of tune, with the higher notes sounding far more raspy than their recorded counterparts. This quartet’s take on this complex death metal isn’t as technical as the two bands before them, but contains dense contemplative and explosive atmospherics. They’re not hyper-aggressive but there are metalcore/deathcore style breakdowns for any hardcore dancers to sink their fangs into. Pitting themselves far from the genre in a way that makes sense when you take this kind of music to its logical extremities is the addition of a saxophonist joining the band on stage for The Silent Life.

The setlist focuses on more songs from the self-titled, including House Of Light and Criminals. The remainder of the show focuses on the second half of their discography, with Where Owls Know My Name and The Work taking centre stage. The likes of A Home, Death is Real and The Void From Which No Sound Escapes excite the fans and light up the venue. As it has been for all of this show, the sound is wonderfully clear and compliments the band’s music sublimely. The Americans’ stage presence is more lively than the previous acts, a benefit awarded to simpler compositions. There’s melodic guitar leads, djent-style chugging a chunky six-string bass and obligatory blastbeats. Aside from the jazzy saxophone, there’s not much progressing the genre here, rather than superimposing various routine prog and death metal passages together side-by-side.



As the performance continues, the songs feel like more of the same, lacking in variety and making each hard to discern from the other much. The venue thins out the closer we get to the end, illustrating that many here are CYNIC fans more so than RIVERS OF NIHIL. Clean ends the show, and frontman and bassist Adam Biggs graciously thanks the energetic Glasgow audience.

Rating: 7/10

Check out our photo gallery from the night’s action in Glasgow from Duncan McCall here:

Warbringer: Knowledge Is Pain

Photo Credit: Alex Solca


Californian thrash metal outfit WARBRINGER made an immediate impact on the scene during their arrival alongside the ‘new wave’ in the early 00s. Since this time they have progressed into one of the most consistent pillars of the genre, with their more recent albums Woe To The Vanquished and Weapons Of Tomorrow providing some of their best material to date. The highly anticipated follow-up Wrath And Ruin is on the horizon and frontman John Kevill continues to fire on all cylinders.



“Some of the themes involved are class, power, technofeudalism, socioeconomics and modern dystopia. We’re looking for a title and we need to use the letter W which is just a thing that we’ve embraced over the years. I came across the word wrath and what came to mind was Théoden‘s battle cry from Return Of The King, ‘Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!’ and that’s where the title was born. It fit in very well with the cover art where it’s like an ivory tower above the clouds and the lords rain down wrath and ruin upon those below them to keep them destitute and miserable. It sounded quite cruel and cold from a word perspective.”



WARBRINGER have tackled a variety of topics in their tenure, from historic battles and milestones in time to the technological advancements in the field of weaponry. This time John opted to add a more personal touch into proceedings, particularly his experiences over the last few years and what the future may bring.

“I came up with the concepts for The Sword And The Cross and A Better World a few years ago which shaped the theme of the record. They were inspired by the experience that followed after the release of our last record where we were grounded, it was COVID and we were sitting there, not able to do anything. Work opportunities were down and the rent was going up and we’re already being squeezed. I had a period of depression and I went to see a therapist about my concerns for the future and they basically said all my concerns were valid, there is nothing they can do and offered me medication. I was reading some social theories by a British guy called Mark Fisher on capitalist realism about how we can’t create a better future because there is this prevailing logic that we’re already in the best possible society and are in the final form of civilisation so keep your head down enjoy it. If you go to a doctor or therapist they’ll say YOU have some mental health problems, YOU have low serotonin and they won’t talk about any of the potential conditions. They will talk about the fish but not the water. He poses the question that if the problem is low serotonin then why do so many people have that?”


He continues, “we repackage system problems and put it on the individuals so they think it’s their fault so I’m trying to pour these thoughts into that song with the lyrics ‘I swallow prescriptions, as the problem is me’ so it’s like the speaker has internalised this and believes he has to fix himself even though he’s observing the world deteriorating around him. I think when you listen to a lot of rock and metal music it’s all about standing tall and proud and I put almost none of that into this record, very purposefully because I feel like it’s more honest and more brutal trying to expressing something about how I feel, about life and the future and it’s a fitting theme for a thrash metal record where I’m screaming into the mic in the first place.”

It only takes a matter of minutes in the company of John to realise he is a very articulate, intelligent and scholarly individual who is just as knowledgeable about the past as he is the present. Sadly that level of awareness can be as much of a curse as a blessing. “They say ignorance is bliss right? That means that the corollary must mean knowledge is pain. Sometimes I do wish I could half lobotomize myself and not worry about life. Me and my wife moved out to the forest because living in the middle of Los Angeles was feeling a little too Blade Runner/Hive City for me and that really contributed to some of the negativity in this record.”



“I used the first person perspective a lot as it was a lot of me sharing my own heart and soul and then when someone listens along they are the ‘I’ and it doesn’t feel like I’m being preachy or telling someone they are wrong. There is another song which fits in tandem with A Better World called Cage Of Air. This was inspired by the fact I was driving by a Subway, I didn’t see the writing but because of those specific colours I knew it was a Subway and it was this moment where I realised that I meet people and sometimes I can’t remember their names but that exact yellow and green was Subway and that the red and blue would be Pepsi or the red and white would be Coca Cola and I didn’t ask for these associations but they’re stored in my memory and it raised the question, how much of my free will is actually mine? I’m trying to focus on those kind of realities and write that in a personal way. The lyrics ‘I’m free to choose how I cough up the rent’ are like, you can be whatever you want to be as long as you can afford the cost of living otherwise enjoy holding your cardboard sign out on the street! It really made me think about my prospects and what would the future be like for my children and it’s really antithetical to what I grew up thinking things would be like. I was a patriotic young American and I was a boy scout and everything so it was just trying to capture that feeling using a lot of different angles.”

The aforementioned The Sword And The Cross meticulously blends both past and present, making comparisons between the division of classes throughout generations. “I came up with the outro first, where the medieval lord is taunting everyone, ‘your children yet unborn, my sons shall be their lords’ and I thought that is phenomenally evil, that needs to go on the record,” explains John.

“I think it puts present day into stark contrast and blows away the myth that we have a free and equal society because we clearly don’t. There’s an economist called Thomas Piketty who showed in a study that America circa 2017 has greater wealth inequality than France did in 1789, before the revolution. Our seventh or eighth grade history teachers would tell us all about the nobles who took everything and left the poor with nothing which made the revolution inevitable and it’s worse now. People are just so complacent about it and it’s really wild to think. All these kind of thoughts were stewing around my head and I also had the question how did lords become lords and what was a castle actually for? Apparently it was more of a thing that you could ride forth from your castle and do whatever you want to the towns people and return to your castle. What’re they going to do? Besiege the castle? So the sword represents violence, direct, naked force and the cross represents ideology. Today it’s less ideology and more entrepreneurial myth, there is no way in hell that Jeff Bezos is worth 10 million times what your life is worth, no matter how smart he is or how hard he’s worked.”



The pandemic unfortunately derailed their well laid plans for touring and promoting on their last album cycle but they fully intend to make up for lost time in support of Wrath And Ruin. “We want to show off the new songs, the old songs and just try to wreck some faces!” Declares John. “We’ve got a US tour, a European/UK tour and then were heading back to Europe for a festival run. It’s more shows than I can even remember. We’re hoping that when the record comes out it may open up some more opportunities for us later this year or the beginning of next as we want to do what we couldn’t do with Weapons Of Tomorrow. Hopefully we can also get out to Southeast Asia or Australia. Strap yourselves in!”

Being in a touring band is by no means the glamorous depiction that many perceive, particularly in this current economy where the price of merely existing has increased significantly. Rather than let this become another obstacle to navigate, WARBRINGER are focused on leaving a lasting legacy that they can all be proud of. “I’ve been doing this for 20 years and the thing I’m proudest of is how we’ve gotten better over time,” discusses John. “I don’t know whether we’re gonna make it commercially playing thrash in the 2020’s but at some point I won’t have another album in me and I don’t want to write records for the sake of it. This one I still had a lot to say and a certain angle I wanted to approach it from. I have to put the art first and the commerce last because if I don’t I’m going against my principles and the very songs I’m writing! I don’t know when that’ll happen but I hope I’ll be able to look back and say that we have one of the most absolutely rock solid discographies or indeed metal. Yes, I’m biased but the consensus is we’ve been often praised for our consistency.”

Wrath And Ruin is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS118 here:

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Jinjer: Hitting Heavy With The Fast Draw

Photo Credit: Lina Glasir



The meteoric trajectory of JINJER seemingly has no end in sight. With constant touring, it’s amazing they’ve managed to put out record after record with barely two or three years between releases. With their creative cup constantly flowing, we caught up with drummer Vlad Ulasevish on their latest record Duél.



While the previous record Wallflowers was incredibly well received, JINJER haven’t rested on their laurels and just copy-pasted a similar approach. In fact, they’ve pretty much done the complete opposite. “So for me, [between] these two albums Wallflowers and Duél we have a big difference, but it’s still JINJER, of course,” Vlad explains. “Roman sounds heavier, I think – but sometimes it’s also more melancholic. So, I think it more have more contrast between hard parts and clean vocals and melancholic parts. I really like this; the difference like between them.”



The record has some real stompers, as is JINJER’s way. When speaking about his own contribution in the context of how the band dynamics, Vlad comments, “You know when the drum is like the loudest instrument in the band? [We didn’t want that]. Yeah, and in this album, in this record, we made first bass and guitar sounds – we made it really aggressive and heavy. And after we just fit the drums inside this huge and massive sound of guitar and bass. With this record, my drums are more simple, I think. With all my parts, I just [play off the] guitar riffs or bass lines and I just follow the follow the melodic or riffs of guitars.

“[Interestingly] in the previous album, we recorded drums first actually, when we try to make like in I spoke, I speak about Wallflowers. So that time when we try to make bass or guitars more aggressive, our sound engineer told us that the drums is a raw because we wanted to made it raw. So the drums this raw. [This time around, the first focus was to make] aggressive sounding guitar or bass, so we will not hear drums at all. So, we’re like, ‘okay, let’s see how it can work’. And in this album, me, Roman and Eugene, we want to achieve that really aggressive guitar sound. So, we spoke with our sound engineer saying, ‘let’s make the guitar sound first, so drums is not as important’. It was first time we worked like this and I really satisfied the result, and hopefully everybody will be too.”


There’s a huge plethora of ideas and styles from hardcore to some doomier moments. It’s a record that feels very carefully crafted, while also not feeling constricted. And while there is a method to every JINJER record, even vocalist Tatiana changed part of her approach, at least to recording.

“To be honest, I think Tatiana starts doing lyrics and vocal lines when all songs are done,” he laughs about the process from instrumentation to lyrics. “Tati starts work when everything is done and the time deadlines start. I don’t know why, but Tati likes to work like this and every time it works. But actually, this record is first time we made vocal demos! When we did Wallflowers or macro and micro, the first studio record was the final studio record [for Tati]. We didn’t have the vocal demos, so sometimes the improvisation was the final version of the song. And this time, Tati flew to us and Warsaw, and we spent, I think, two weeks for recording vocal demos. And after we had time to change some things, and now in this album, I think the vocal parts are super cool. Every note we discussed, and all harmonies, all rhythms. [Collectively] we worked with vocals the same as we work with guitar, bass of or drums. So I really enjoy this, and I really like what we what we have at the end.”



JINJER has always been a band that really does things their own way, how ever they like. They’re consistent and dedicated, while also having the creative minds that allow for fluidity. The complete freedom to play with variable sounds and styles feels like an exciting prospect when working on Duél. “Every song is just its own thing, so we didn’t think about how it will be in the whole album,” Vlad explains earnestly. “We didn’t plan outright which song will be after each song. So, like, after we have all songs, we start to thinking about how it will be listening in the album. [It’s cool because] when we doing a song, we are just doing one song and nobody knows where exactly in the album it will be. Maybe some bands can like thinking about it like the concept of the album and like how the story of the album will be, but we’re not. We’re just doing song after the song after the song.”

“As you can hear, we have such different songs. One song is like pure hardcore, another song can be like super melancholic, or if you’re listening the song called Tumbleweed, somebody told us that it’s doom metal. Yeah every song is, in my opinion, different. It’s hard to think about how it about the conception of everything. So lyrically, of course, Tatiana can make the concept, especially when she has all songs together to write the lyrics. For me, I think it’s impossible, because first demo was written two and a half years ago. It’s a long time actually to make every song, because we can write the song, and the next one will be in like, two months. And after two months, third, you know, so, like it’s impossible to think about concept for all that time.”

Regardless of how they stitch together the details of their tapestry, JINJER’s latest outing in Duél feels like the band are still overflowing with ideas and artistry. The potential to surprise is still embedded deep in them as a group, as speak their truth in ever dynamic new ways.

Duél is out now via Napalm Records. View this interview, alongside dozens of other killer bands, in glorious print magazine fashion in DS118 here:

Killswitch Engage: Come What May

Resilience is one of the most powerful traits a person can possess. The ability to overcome seemingly insurmountable circumstances whilst maintaining the truest sense of oneself is what makes us human. Though there are many cogs to the machine in terms of conquering that which stands in our way, the one many cherish the most is the capacity to face life’s consequences and allow those trials to become tools for growth, come what may. KILLSWITCH ENGAGE’s ninth studio effort, This Consequence, was the effect to 2019’s Atonement’s cause.



With Adam Dutkiewicz [guitars] shouldering much of the creative process for Atonement, the brotherhood desperately needed cohesiveness. What better way to test the ties that bind than collaboration and, at times, brutal honesty. “Looking back on it, it was necessary,” Jesse reminisces from his home in New York State. “It was good to have everyone’s input as it helped me with the idea of allowing my creations and things I hold precious to die”. Often times the repercussion of being a creative mind is holding an attachment to our output so it becomes personal when scrutiny is brought into the mix. However as Jesse goes on to tell us. “If someone criticises your art, it’s not necessarily a reflection of you. It’s a reflection of the work itself,” and now looks back on it rather fondly. “As an artist, they challenged me in ways I’ve never been challenged. And because of that, we got what we have here which is uniquely KILLSWITCH ENGAGE.”



Part of the unparalleled nature of This Consequence came from something the band hadn’t done with Jesse in two decades; creating music in a room together. “To me that was magic,” he recalls with a warm smile. “To be in the environment where riffs were being shown and creativity was happening on the spot, it was a really cool way to enter this process.” It wouldn’t all be smooth sailing however as before pen met paper, Jesse had to subdue a demon of his own; the sense of apathy the pandemic had left him with. “I wasn’t the same person,” he comments. “Coming out of it, I didn’t know what I wanted to say as an artist – What do I have to say to this world that just went through this and continues to go through insanity from wars to police brutality to everything that we’re being spoon-fed through the media, social media, mainstream media, political division. It was overwhelming.”

It was with the action of tapping into suppressed frustration that rekindled Jesse’s passion. But how did that act of breaking through the stalemate happen in the first place? His well-documented introspection and self-betterment held the answer as he goes on to say; “If something happens in my life, I have to reflect on it. Why did that happen? Cause and effect, consequence, if you will. What are the consequences of your actions? When you suppress things, you can make yourself sick, you can spiral into depression, you can be very volatile and snap at people for no reason. I had a little bit of all those things.” Coming to the realisation a personality trait no longer serves us or the person we have become as a result of trauma isn’t who we really are, has us facing perhaps the most difficult question: Now what? Suppression may be the easier path but what we ignore eventually rears its head in much uglier ways. For KILLSWITCH ENGAGE, and Jesse himself, that had to come out lyrically. “It’s anger that’s been suppressed, but it’s still in some way, shape, or form, a positive desire to move forward with a better mindset. Righteous anger is the running theme for this record, and obviously consequence, cause and effect and the question of where do we go from here.”

KILLSWITCH ENGAGE has flown the flag encouraging us to be the positive change we wish to see. Or as Collusion so succinctly surmises “Stop waiting for a symbolic saviour”. Why have others do for you what you can do for yourself? It’s this do it yourself attitude KILLSWITCH ENGAGE has carried with them from their youth within the hardcore scene to the present day. The ethos of self-empowerment is the embodiment of the hardcore genre and of KILLSWITCH ENGAGE itself; “it’s in our DNA as a band,” Jesse emphatically states.



While tracks such as Collusion, Discordant Nation, and Aftermath may seem as though they have set parameters, that doesn’t mean certain people are excluded from its meaning. “It’s important for art to be able to speak to people where they come from,” Jesse notes. “When I’m writing, I’m hoping different people from different walks of life can relate to these line.” As is the case with music, everything is open to interpretation and it’s these points of discussion Jesse thrives on going on to say; “sometimes that interpretation is more powerful than what you were even trying to do with it – it’s incredible!” Delving further into the incredibly rich medium of music, he gives a moment’s pause; “I don’t think people realise how music is all encompassing in our lives. Watch a good film and put it on mute, I’ve done this, you’ll realise how music will lead the emotion of the scene you’re watching and there is no other medium that can do that.”


With the power of music firmly at the heart of our discussion, it would be a sin to not mention I Believe. Partly at the personal request of our writer but also as a reminder to our conversational partner that his platform has and will continue to help those within our scene when we need support the most. “I had to fight tooth and nail for that song to go on the record,” Jesse jokes. “But I think it will help a lot of people. What strikes me about the word belief is it really is in the eyes of the beholder.” Perhaps going back to the message of Collusion’s symbolic saviour, the vocalist is keen to remind people of the power they hold if they exercised a little faith. “Faith is such a loaded word for people. You don’t have to be on your knees praying to Jesus to have faith. You just have to believe in yourself,” he observes. “You have a choice every day when you wake up in what you can believe in, why not let yourself be the recipient?”

It isn’t solely self-compassion Jesse wants to see more of. As a fellow empath to our writer and perhaps personifying the notion of being the change he wants to see in the world, Jesse comments; “It can be said over and over again that love is the most powerful thing. I know the world isn’t based on that; it’s based on power struggles and greed, its driving force is all about control. The only way to combat that darkness and that control is love.” He again takes a moment as if to organise his thoughts, “I know it sounds very John Lennon but if we all had a little more love there would be more peace and we would be in a much better place.” This doesn’t mean we stage hotel bed protests nor do we resurrect the Summer of Love. Simply put, we need to exercise empathy toward ourselves and our surrounding environments, including our human brethren; “get outside of the box you’re living in, try to see the world differently and act upon it. Be radical in your desire for positive change,” Jesse adds.

Cult of the Serpent Sun – Nite

With a masterful blend of traditional heavy metal and visceral black metal, San Francisco four-piece NITE arrived on the scene during a globally weird time. Bookending the pandemic with their debut 2020 album Darkness Silence Mirror Flame and 2022’s Voices Of The Kronian Moon, It was the latter that really engaged the wider masses. Lyrics swirling with mysticism, references to the occult and horror were the order of the day. The music fitted these themes to a tee building an atmosphere and setting the atmosphere precisely for each track. A winning formula, and one that NITE have sought to capitalise on. While heavy music often features the subject matter mentioned, NITE have crafted it to be integral to their personality. With their third release Cult Of The Serpent Sun, they have struck gold.



What is immediately apparent from this new record is that NITE are not trying to replicate what they have already achieved. There is a refined presence to their music. A greater attack that generates a commanding stance and dominates the entire album. Right from the introduction of the album with the title track with aggressive staccato opening notes, it’s clear that NITE are making a statement. There’s a swagger to the riffing and the strength of song writing is undeniable. The energy is captivating and generates an uncompromising aural attack. Their previous albums were largely written remotely with aspects shared digitally owing to restrictions. This one has the feel of a live experience, they were afforded the freedoms to write and record as a band and the organic power is translated perfectly onto the recording.

No mere flash in the pan. This album is gripping from the first note to the last. Tracks like Crow (Fear The Night), the enthralling Carry On and heavy weight closer Winds Of Sokar all define the essence of NITE. Previous releases, while having a production mix that encapsulated their desired delivery, have been eclipsed by those on show with Cult Of The Serpent Sun. The guitars dominate the soundscape with galloping riffs, melodic interplay and hook after hook delivered with aplomb. However, there is no detriment to the overall sound. The drums have flare and a driving force that is not lost in the mix, similarly the bass lines are not outgunned by the twin guitars and have their own space to drive the underpinning groove.

For a band that have established their themes in the phantasmagoria, with esoteric mystery and the occult with a healthy soupcon of horror. They are also able to tap into the current zeitgeist and more grounded emotion that many can relate to. For example, the triumphant The Last Blade takes on the spectre of nuclear events, which, given current events, is something of a topical discussion. The Mystic, with its doom laced beat and dramatic delivery is at first listen a heavily weighted black metal fusion. Has elements of emotive resonance with the birth of a child and how a new parent can come to terms with that.

A refinement in their production and an embrace of greater awareness of the human emotional experience as well as world events has led to NITE creating an album of enormous magnetism. If the preceding album made people take notice, this is the one to get them ensconced in record collections far and wide. They execute elements of traditional metal that will entice even the most denim and leather, patch sporting metalheads around. Simultaneously the guttural, aggressive black metal vocals will appeal to the more extreme fans. Include some first-rate song writing, modern metal approaches to mixing and exceptional musicianship, Cult Of The Serpent Sun is a landmark for NITE and for 2025.

Rating: 9/10



Cult Of The Serpent Sun is out now via Season of Mist.

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Killswitch Engage: Come What May
ALBUM REVIEW: Bioluminescence – Dawn Of Ouroboros

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LIVE REVIEW: Opeth @ The Roundhouse, London

It would be tough to argue against the notion that OPETH are one of the most significant metal bands of the 21st century. Endlessly varied yet instantly recognisable, the brainchild of Mikael Åkerfeldt have amassed a rich catalogue and displayed mastery of progressive and extreme music in all its forms. 2024’s The Last Will And Testament was its best new addition in a decade, and as part of their Europe and UK touring cycle to promote it, OPETH made a sold-out stop to iconic London venue The Roundhouse.

Support comes in a diametrically-opposed fashion, in the face of traditional metal merchants GRAND MAGUS. The Swedish three-piece hit the filling-up Roundhouse with a doom-tinged brand of classic heavy metal, featuring uncomplicated riffs, catchy hooks and rip-roaring guitar solos. Frontman and lead guitarist Janne ‘JB’ Christoffersson is visually striking on stage, looking like a jacked younger version of Rob Halford, but his somewhat awkward stage banter between songs fails to connect. Still, the progressively-minded crowd responds positively to the rock n’ roll stylings of the Stockholm trio, capped off with a stunning audience singalong for set closer Hammer Of The North. More of an amuse bouche than an appetizer, GRAND MAGUS whet our appetite for the altogether more indulgent main course that’s to follow.

Rating: 6/10Opeth live @ The Roundhouse, London. Photo Credit: Karolina Janikunaite

The dimmed stage and the five silhouettes on it are suddenly illuminated by the ‘frame’ of disjointed screens that surrounds them, projecting artwork from The Last Will and Testament, as its opener §1 echoes through the North London venue. The shiver-inducing melodies and a growling Mikael Åkerfeldt are here to announce OPETH in all their glory. A double of fan-favourite epics Master’s Apprentices and The Leper Affinity follows to cement this impression, serving more head-ripping riffs in two songs than most bands write in an entire career.

These modern metal classics sound extra vibrant and exciting, and a big part of this is the inclusion of new drummer Waltteri Väyrynen (ex-PARADISE LOST). The thirty-year-old has injected new lifeblood into the quintet through his playing style that is aggressive, yet marked by dynamism and subtlety. His first recorded work sees him come up with some stunningly challenging drum parts – and Åkerfeldt himself jokes about the stupidly complex jobs they’ve given themselves while introducing §7 – but the band sounds like a well-oiled machine.Opeth live @ The Roundhouse, London. Photo Credit: Karolina Janikunaite

While the return of the death metal stylings are the topic of the day for OPETH, the Swedes don’t neglect to give a nod to their softer side. Deep cut Häxprocess gives us a reminiscence of the cult 70s folk-prog concerts that this historic venue has seen, whereas ballad In My Time Of Need sees the crowd relieve Åkerfeldt of singing duties during the choruses. The frontman is on familiar good form tonight, cracking dry jokes and exuding an aura of complete confidence. His high watermark comes after a peak in the set itself – the jubilant reception to Ghost Of Perdition makes him exclaim “haven’t we been fucking great tonight?”. Yes, Mikael, you bloody have.

The odd thing about an OPETH concert is that it can only ever scratch the surface. Two hours of playing only encompass ten songs and entirely gloss over some of their most beloved albums, yet main set closer A Story Never Told once again cements the great reception of the new material. The encore is time to land the plane home safely. Sorceress crushes with its bulldozing main motif, while Deliverance – a song steadily becoming their equivalent of Free Bird – finally brings us to progressive death nirvana.



Simultaneously virtuosic and direct, with a live show that makes your jaw drop at its technical brilliance while maintaining a lightness of touch, OPETH remain a live force to be reckoned with.

Rating: 10/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in London from Karolina Janikunaite here:
























































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