Evile, Divine Chaos, Tortured Demon
Boston Music Room, London
24/02/22
Live Review by Chris Galea
Two factors spring to mind about Thrash. It’s an enduring Metal sub-genre which had the San Francisco Bay (U.S.A.) and Germany as its historical epicentres, but other than that it had influential bands from all over the world. The other factor is a perhaps bit more personal… for me Thrash is also a cathartic outlet of music, best appreciated within a like-minded crowd.
As punters quickly throng this venue in the North of London, I see a lot of young Metal fans with a few clusters of Thrash fans who, like myself, were already around during the genre’s formative years. For the old and the new, the passionate and the curious, the historical and the cathartic… everything was about to come to a head.
All three bands on the bill fit into the same music genre, more or less, but each have their own way of interpreting it… as we are about to find out as chaos and evil demons are unleashed (yeah I’m playing with words there but it’s also true… seriously).
Tortured Demon
Interestingly, when the three members of Tortured Demon were born, the other two bands on tonight’s bill had already been formed. Yes, Tortured Demon are that young. Although the Mancunians’ material felt a bit underdeveloped at times, the Metal framework seemed solidly in place, particularly with regards the drums. Meanwhile, Jacob Parkinson – on guitar and lead vocals – made a concerted effort to animate the crowd
Towards the end of their set, Tortured Demon were joined by Jut Tabor…singer of Divine Chaos…and the four of them delivered what I believe to be ‘A Knee To The Face Of Corruption’, from the band’s debut and only album “In Desperation’s Grip” of 2021.
Set-list:
In Desperation’s Grip
The Invasion
Cold Blood
Oppressed
Cut The Budget…Cut Your Throat
A Knee To The Face Of Corruption
https://www.facebook.com/t0rtureddem0n/
Divine Chaos
There was a leap ahead in terms of quality when Divine Chaos hit the stage. The band’s Thrash has a lot of Melodic Death Metal and Hardcore embedded in it… not usually my preferred variant of Metal, but on the other hand I was impressed by the band’s tightness and the ferocity of their music.
Frontman Jut Tabor had a commanding stage presence and his singing brimmed with rancour and spite. The guitars, too, had moments of brilliance but as a single unit all the band was… well… divine.
The entire set-list focused on “The Way To Oblivion”, the second album by Divine Chaos, (released in 2020). Presumably, this was partly because the line-up in the previous album was quite different from the current one. In any case, based on tonight’s performance, if you’ve never seen this band play live, be sure to grab the next opportunity to do so.
Set-list:
Suicide Salvation
Upon The Shrine
Murder For Sale
The Way To Oblivion
Serpent’s Words
Nation’s Damnation
Listen to a few comments given by Divine Chaos drummer Mariusz Marecki:
https://www.divinechaos.co.uk/
Evile
As much as I enjoyed Divine Chaos, Evile were in a class of their own. The arsenal of riffs that the band deployed onto the crowd was earth-shattering and felt tighter than a pre-Covid pub on a Saturday night.
Evile were promoting their most recent album “Hell Unleashed”, which was actually released almost a year ago but the pandemic had prevented the band from showcasing it earlier. Furthermore, this was the first tour where Ol Drake replaced his brother Matt on lead vocals and it turns out Ol’s quite adept in building a band / crowd rapport. By the time ‘Head Of The Demon’ kicked in, the crowd in Boston Music Room was moshing, crowd surfing, stage diving… jeez… it’s been too long since I last experienced such joyful mayhem.
‘In Memorium’ offered a rare moment of sobriety. The song was dedicated to Mike Alexander, Evile’s bassist who had passed away while the band had been on tour in Sweden. (Didn’t Cliff Burton also die when Metallica were on tour in Sweden? That’s certainly a tragic co-incidence.)
‘Thrasher’ was particularly well received and during set closer ‘Enter The Grave’, the audience made sure all the screams that were left were screamed and all the heads that still needed to bang were banged.
Set-list:
Paralysed
Killer From The Deep
Head Of The Demon
The Thing (1982)
We Who Are About To Die
Cult
Five Serpent’s Teeth
In Memoriam
Hell Unleashed
Gore
Thrasher
Descent Into Madness
Infected Nation
Enter The Grave
Check out the video interview with Ben Carter, drummer of Evile, here:
LINKS:
Boston Music Room:
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