Sylosis + Bleed From Within + While She Sleeps + Anterior @ HMV Institute, 19th February 2011

Unfortunately, I am too late to catch most of Anterior‘s set, walking in just in time for their last song. It seems to have a focus on beefy metal riffs and lots of guitars solos. Their sound is pretty powerful, and they’re very tight but the crowd don’t seem too enthusiastic towards to it.

The crowd picked up pretty quickly for northern boys While She Sleeps as a pit opens up in the first seconds of their set and stays lively throughout. Playing a style of metal mixed with hardcore, that I’d hate to call metalcore for the horrible assumptions people make.

The band are more riff based, with plenty of brutal beatdowns, but some nicely put together melodic sections as well. The band are lively, and really get the crowd involved, the frontman often leaning well into the audience to get them to shout along. Stand out song The North Stands For Nothing really gets the crowd yelling.

Next up are Bleed From Within for even further north again, and it’s clear these guys love what they do. They’re less hardcore, and more metal than WSS and this suits the crowd fine. The pit opens up again, this time bigger, as the room has filled up somewhat since I arrived.

The band play a tight set, powering through a crowd pleasing set. The frontman does an admiral job of getting people moving, and keeps the songs coming, with barely pause for breath.

Sylosis are the last on, playing a set even heavier than BFW, the pace is set early on with steady double kick and thrashy metal riffage a constant. With more well performed solos, the band play on their strengths: Power and speed. However the lack of dynamics causes the set to tire quickly, to this reviewer at least.

The audience are still lapping it up though, screaming before the band hit the stage, and screaming for more before the encore. The band play an excellent set for their fans, but the constant and unrelenting metal needs more melodic guitar work, and some variety in song style to please me.

Highly recommended for fans of metal, but not so much if you’re not a die-hard.

Review – Ben Duff

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