INTRODUCING: Animalcules

Glasgow’s ANIMALCULES have brought a zest and excitement to the UK with their genre blending debut record Luz. We caught up with the band about how they put together their wildly catchy record.



Luz displays a blending of math rock, post hardcore and progressive emo that’s a fizzy, frantic ball of energy and is immediately engaging. “I think it just naturally happened,” Innis explains on how they found their very distinct sound. “We try to just write music we find fun and interesting and that just happened to be the sound that came from that. We all have really varied tastes between pop-punk, prog metal, video game soundtracks etc so I think our sound naturally ended up having pieces from all those influences.”
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Those influences mean the record is laced with loads of little nuggets of audible quirks, that are a delight to discover over each listen. “Definitely the bitcrush on PureJim was one of my favourites, but I love playing about with using effects in ways they’re not ‘meant’ to be used,” Jamie gladly tells us. “There’s loads of little bits of ear candy in the album that I love that I think most people wouldn’t notice but for me are some of my favourite bits.”

It’s so exciting to hear a band with this much enthusiasm for the nerdy qualities of their sounds, while still being able to tastefully implement them in a musical way. “I had the most fun writing the interludes and sound designing the intros on the album,” adds Ellis. “The turnover was very fast and rewarding since I wrote most of them the night before one show or another to give us tuning time. I’d usually start with just a bit of guitar or synths from one of the tracks and end up turning it into something that eventually would end up connecting the whole album, was pretty neat.”


Luz is a record that explodes with charismatic, spirited ideas that knit together like different coloured threads in a tapestry. They’re individual and add so much to the greater whole, while the minutia of what gives each song its entirely distinct spirit. That makes sense when considered in the parameters that ANIMALCULES have been writing in. “It was actually just a collection of songs that we had built up that felt like they worked together best,” Jamie clarifies. “The album was originally going to look very different. We had the idea of splitting our tracks up and doing a two-part album with a lighter and darker side, so hopefully you guys can expect the heavier album later this year. For now, I think we’re just glad that people are enjoying it, so I guess we’d just hope that carries on. We’re definitely excited for the part two album now we have something out to compare it to I think that makes it more interesting.”

For all it’s instrumental playfulness, the lyrics in Luz are just as catchy and intriguing. “I took a few different approaches writing the lyrics for these songs,” Ellis recounts. “A couple of them are based around a feeling I was having about something around the writing process, pseudo non-fiction in particular comes to mind as I decided I had to stop smoking for my mental health. However, a good few are just straight up fictional stories that came together as they were written. Flavour Town is basically Mean Girls.”



While the album has been a coming together in a steady writing process for many years, the recording didn’t necessarily follow suit. “The recording process was not as smooth sailing as it could have been,” Ellis agrees, “a lot of stuff needed re-tracked months into the process. Everyone’s different schedules and availability became an issue too at times and the whole process for me personally became a bit of a life absorbing experience.”

“However, the songs wouldn’t have ended up sounding as interesting as they do if we hadn’t allowed them the extra time in the oven. It was a massive learning experience and we know now what to avoid for the next one.”

As well as the records distinct sound ANIMALCULES have also procured a super novel art style for their album cover. “The original concept was a wee sketch of Oliver the mouse in his bed we had prepared as a demo for an artis,” recounts Ellis. “We had no plans for it to be pixel art until we saw Aleene’s work (@dandelion.pixelart on Instagram) and then we realised the pixel art felt perfect for the album’s style. Aleene also added a whole new colour scheme and aesthetic that just felt way better than we could have hoped and also even made us an animation that gave it even more life for our canvas. Honestly such a talented artist, check them out, we hope to do more work with them soon.”

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LIVE REVIEW: Blood Incantation @ The Garage, Glasgow

Predicting which underground death metal acts are going to climb the gloomy ladder towards the mainstream is like predicting when a fly’s going to sneeze. Progressive death metallers BLOOD INCANTATION proved to be such a band, expanding far beyond playing 200-person venues on their first UK trek in 2017 to garnering acclamatory coverage in The Guardian newspaper. Tonight’s debut Scottish show in Glasgow at The Garage is sold out, a circumstance that only took a single month. It’s incredible that the promoter didn’t upsize the venue to let more disappointed fans witness these cosmic meddlers in the flesh.

Sijjin live @ The Garage, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan Photography

First up is German and Spanish SIJJIN, a new death/thrash collective that features bassist and vocalist Malte Gericke from the defunct NECROS CHRISTOS. They waste no time launching into Daemon Blessex from Sumerian Promises, their second album released this year. The sound is muddy and especially unforgiving to the guitarist, Erkaitz Garmendia. However, this is mostly rectified later when the sound becomes clearer and sharper. The trio successfully splices classic Bay Area thrash with its Teutonic analogue, while adorning some old school death metal, a la MORBID ANGEL and POSSESSED, into the unholy concoction. Five Blades and Religious Insanity Denies Slavery represent their debut album Heljjin Combat. The three-piece almost constantly headbang, and as the venue fills up quickly, the audience awards each song with voluminous ovation. Closing with Condem by Primal Contact, SIJJIN have left a positive impression on the city and hopefully won over some new converts.

Rating : 7/10Oranssi Pazuzu live @ The Garage, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan Photography

Next up is Finland’s ORANSSI PAZUZU, a haunting electro-experimental metal collective, who mystified this city just last year on a completely different type of metal line-up. Their music violently transcends genres and subgenres; there are atmospheric, industrial, trip hop, jazz, black metal, ambient drone, sludge, noise, prog rock influences and so much more. The result is something truly original yet psychotic, grandiose but claustrophobic, tortuous and torturous. Most of the five members wield keyboards, and all guitars are accompanied by a carpet of pedals. Even the black metal growls are armoured by various effects, subtracting any sense of humanity from them.
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Last year’s Muuntautuja is an album that every fan of suffocating, oppressive music should listen to. Fortunately, the Finns air most of this release live tonight. Bioalkemisti is a bass-heavy psychonaut’s nightmare, the title track is a calculatingly sinister mental assault, while Hautatuuli has to be the most terrifying trip hop song committed to tape. While the crowd is mostly quiet throughout the set (presumably processing what the fuck they’re witnessing), the robust applauses suggest that they enjoy some part of the aural torment.

Rating: 9/10Blood Incantation live @ The Garage, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan Photography

The cosmic obelisks at either side of the stage light up their interstellar sigils just before headliners BLOOD INCANTATION crash land on stage. They waste no time opening with the entirety of The Stargate song from the wildly successful Absolute Elsewhere. This otherworldly hybridisation of death metal, inspired by IMMOLATION and GORGUTS, PINK FLOYD’s meandering prog rock and TANGERINE DREAM and OZRIC TENTACLES’ ethereal electronic soundscapes is intriguing, creative and addictive. The four-piece lineup is supplemented by a live keyboardist, John Gamiño, imbuing the music with an extraterrestrial atmosphere. The sound is delectable and doesn’t diminish the intricacies these Americans have layered the metal with.

After The Stargate is over, guitarist and vocalist Paul Riedl asks someone in the front row to flip the record. The attendee doesn’t realise that the frontman wants her to mime flipping a vinyl over to start the other side of the record, and it takes a while for her to fully understand, seemingly long after the rest of the audience gets the point. Next up, we’re launching through the second half of the album: The Message. This collection of three parts dials up the intensity with particularly chug-heavy death metal, but also dulcet CYNIC-inspired leads and unabashed PINK FLOYD worship. It takes some time but eventually, the audience does warm up to terraforming the venue via moshing and crowd surfing. Playing all of Absolutely Elsewhere is a flawless idea, and perfect decisions don’t end there. The band adds in some older numbers, introducing new fans to older material – the vicious death metal-concentrated The Giza Power Plant and The Vth Tablet (Of Enûma Eliš).Blood Incantation live @ The Garage, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan Photography

BLOOD INCANTATION leave the stage to rapturous acclamation, the entire hall remaining steadfast for an encore. They’re rewarded with the disquieting Meticulous Soul Devourment interlude from the outstanding Starspawn debut album. This is stalked by the frenzied and tumultuous Obliquity of the Ecliptic from the Luminescent Bridge EP. Following this one and a half hour abduction, it’s safe to say these ambitious astral conspiracy theorists put their peers to shame. Such a flawless performance, bristling with outlandish technical prowess and ethereal ambience, is rare to strike these shores. Hopefully, BLOOD INCANTATION will return to Glasgow on their next European cruise at a significantly roomier venue.

Rating: 10/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Glasgow from Alan Swan Photography here:








































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Killswitch Engage @ Manchester Academy, Manchester

Metalcore is arguably enjoying its most fruitful period in its three decade history. For a start, there’s a crop of bands enjoying stratospheric heights in ARCHITECTS, BRING ME THE HORIZON and BAD OMENS while a healthy population keep the scene alive and kicking. Additionally, the century’s golden generation are enjoying anniversary years, with the likes of TRIVIUM and BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE celebrating Ascendancy and The Poison on their recent tour at the start of the year. For over 25 years, Massachusetts heavyweights KILLSWITCH ENGAGE have retained their place at the table, as this year’s This Consequence attests to. Judging from the absolutely packed Manchester Academy that awaits them, it’s clear just how much this band are loved.

Decapitated live @ Manchester Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography
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DECAPITATED might be openers on this European run, but the Polish technical death metallers are a respected name in heavier music circles. As such, there’s a healthy throng of people awaiting them on this larger stage, and a healthy percentage of those who might not have delved this deep into heavy music. And the band don’t disappoint. Hitting hard with a quick fire one-two of Cancer Culture and Just a Cigarette, the band dispatch killer grooves, thunderous drums and a confident display from new frontman Eemeli Bodde. It’s a Cancer Culture-heavy set, which makes logical sense, but the more-recent Earth Scar and the iconic Spheres of Madness showcase DECAPITATED, and particularly band founder and guitarist Wacław ‘Vogg’ Kiełtyka, at their best. A confident opening.

Rating: 8/10Fit For An Autopsy live @ Manchester Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography
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They might be the youngest band on the bill by give or take nine years, New Jersey’s FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY bring a more straight-forward bludgeoning than DECAPITATED. There’s still flashes of technicality, dispatched expertly to pin-point precision. And in frontman Joe Badolato, the band possess a frontman whose vocal range cuts through their hench deathcore with tremendous weight; particularly in The Sea Of Tragic Beasts. New standalone single It Comes For You sounds immense in the live environment, Hostage‘s emphatic chorus feels made for stages of this calibre, and in set closer Far From Heaven, the band sound colossally heavy. It’s utterly immense, bringing the curtain down on a solid outing from one of deathcore’s newer heavy hitters.

Rating: 8/10Hatebreed live @ Manchester Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography

It’s been six long years since HATEBREED last rolled through Manchester, and scanning across the now-packed Manchester Academy, you could hazard a guess there’s as many people hear for Connecticut’s finest as tonight’s headliners. It’s helped by the surprise announcement that the band would play an in prompt show at the famous Star & Garter (which has just a capacity of 200!) the following week. Here though, the band are on thunderous form. Arriving on stage to ACCEPT‘s Balls to the Wall feels akin to a boxing entrance, and it’s fitting when the band deliver a three-punch knockout in I Will Be Heard, Make the Demons Obey and To The Threshold. Led by the ever-energetic Jamey Jasta, whose ear-to-ear grin and enthused stage presence keeps the crowd bouncing. He goads the older faces in the crowd to come out of mosh retirement and leaps to high wave the waves of crowdsurfers crashing over the barrier into the security team’s collective arms. It’s a set that passes by in the blink of an eye, with Destroy Everything doing exactly what it says on the tin, whilst Looking Down the Barrel of Today sees HATEBREED command and conquer. Let’s hope it’s not another six years before they roll through again.

Rating: 9/10Killswitch Engage live @ Manchester Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography
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By the time KILLSWITCH ENGAGE arrive, the excitement is at fever-point, with a multi-generational crowd ready to welcome the band as returning heroes. Set openers, Strength of the Mind and Rose of Sharyn, two ends of the band’s storied history, are the perfect openers as the band ignite and set off the musical equivalent of a controlled demolition. The riffwork from Adam Dutkiewicz, who spends the set parading around the stage with glee and boyish charm, and Joel Stroetzel is on-point, and frontman Jesse Leach‘s assertive growls and crisp cleans entice deafening singalongs from the adoring crowd.

Whereas other bands from metalcore’s golden generation have spent the 2020s celebrating full anniversaries of their landmark records, KILLSWITCH celebrate their milestone band anniversary running a victory lap across most of their cherished discography. Long-term favourites in In Due Time, Beyond the Flames and This Is Absolution still retain their status as heavy hitters while Reckoning (taken from 2009’s largely forgotten second self-titled effort) is a surprise (but welcome) addition. Material taken from this year’s release, Aftermath, Broken Glass, Forever Aligned, and I Believe, all sound like they’ve been part of the band’s setlist for years, particularly I Believe, that really demonstrates the superb vocal harmonies between Leach and Dutkiewicz.Killswitch Engage live @ Manchester Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography
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It’s a performance that rarely falters, while considering the band’s decades of experience, is to be expected. However, that does not detract from the sheer joy it is to experience KILLSWITCH ENGAGE performing at this level. And when you have a closing run of This Fire, My Curse, The End of Heartache and My Last Serenade, it’s as close to metalcore perfection as you can get. Humbled and clearly appreciative of a crowd that sold the venue out months in advance, KILLSWICH ENGAGE deliver a performance that serves as a love letter to those who have stuck with them every step of the way on their 25 year journey.

Rating: 9/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Manchester from Serena Hill Photography here:














































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