SailleOi Inferno Festival, you’ve nicked all the good bands leaving us stuck in London with a dull long weekend. Hold on though the Unicorn is always reliable for a good evening of live music and indeed there is a night of black metal on down there. Not only that it is always free to get into and unlike Norway we don’t have to pay £12 a pint, sorted!

Unfortunately we are a band down as Premature Birth have a drummer afflicted with food poisoning and even with the best intentions, percussion playing in the toilet simply ain’t gonna work. First up then and with more time for us to get suitably lubricated are Vehement from Eastbourne, up for a trip from the seaside. They are a completely unknown quantity as far as I am concerned and it would appear that they self-released an album called ‘Collapse’ a year or so ago and had a couple of demos out before it. The very first notes spoke loudly and had me thinking of avant Norse territory with a sound reminiscent of Ved Buens Ende and Virus. Once the clean vocals came in this was enforced as I was also reminded of Garm and Arcturus before the band bit in and surged off in a more punishing direction, hitting a solid groove with a large powerful tumult behind it. Some sinuous fretwork blossomed and the band had immediately made a good impression and brought everyone in to pack the stage area and watch them. Lights bathed them in a cold dark blue as they took off and stormed away at a neck cracking pace. Again vocally there was a bit of Borknagar about things now and musically the band built things into an involving and hypnotic flow building up to a near fever pitch with the guitars dexterously weaving away. It was an invigorating display and one that made me glad I had decided to come out. I think they said the last song was called ‘Ashes’ and it blazed away impressing no end. A new discovery and an impressive one, hopefully we will cross paths again.

From memory for what good it is I think this was my first encounter with Liverpool based Ethereal. I am sure if I had seen them before I would remember their corpse paint. This was something they obviously took a lot of time and skill at applying and it has to be said it looked fantastic. Aesthetics aside could they walk the talk? Again the answer was a near instant and resounding yes! Having taken to the stage with dry ice fogging things and with their backs turned to the audience, when they actually combusted they did it with a force and velocity that fair near took my breath away. Pure violence flew off the stage before building to grandiose peaks. Last EP title from 2011 ‘Revelation Beast’ had vocalist Naut bellowing and looming over the audience with an imposing presence. It had a feral intensity about it and the whiplashing frenzy spurred on by hefty drum whacks was fired out at a hellacious pace damn near taking our heads off. ‘Bloodstained Martyr’ is a perfect title for the Easter weekend and we were informed that ‘Son Of The Redeemer’ was a song from a forthcoming album Opus Aethereum’ which I am certainly going to want to check out on the strength of this. It was one of those sets that I didn’t particularly want to finish. ‘Unholy Undying’ was a literal blitzkrieg of force and as good a hateful sermon as I have encountered in a while. It got fists pumping and blood flowing as far as the audience were concerned too. Another full strike for underground British black metal, there’s definitely some good stuff out there.

But we are off to Belgium for the finale with Saille. I am pretty sure that they have been over to our shores a couple of times before but I had not managed to catch them. An afternoon refresher course to 2013 album Ritu had partly set me up for the event but the first noticeable thing as they strode onto the stage was the complete difference to the last band, no corpse paint here that’s for sure; it was going to be down to the music to do the talking. Starting off with the strangely entitled ‘Plaigh Allais’ it was quickly evident that there was not going to be any problem on that front. The blockbuster orchestral intro had already set up the atmosphere and the Spanish sounding classical guitar was unexpected before they hit the symphonic charge corresponding with an impressive hair-twirling display in time with the music. Adding a progressive and technical twist on what had come before, it was obvious from the start that this lot could really play. The melody, intensity and intricacy behind the music all combined with precision. I may have misheard but think that vocalist Dennie Grondelaers greeted us after the first number saying that the band came from the land of paedophiles, something that apparently the internet concurs with. Swiftly moving on then ‘Blood Libel’ follows with a tribal drum sound and some jagged intricate fret work. There are passages that totally annihilate as well as a slow, doom-laden break all packed into a 4 or 5 minute number. There’s plenty going on here to keep us on our toes. The 6 band members certainly seem fantastically co-ordinated and the set has lots of emotion and atmosphere to build upon. There are moments that come across as jubilant and triumphant and everything about this is highly charged. There is a bit of a cheeky Phantom Of The Opera keyboard work injected into proceedings at some point before the next meaty slab of bombastic blackness steams out the speakers. Elsewhere I was reminded of the stomp heavy march of Rotting Christ on the Lovecraftian ‘Fhtagn’ and the keyboards on ‘Maere’ turned things to a Danny Elfman wonderland making me think it was Halloween all of a sudden. ‘Haunter In The Dark’ gave out a doom laden caress and every song here seemed to have plenty of personality about it.

Lethargy almost got the better of me today and I very nearly lunched this out. If I had have done I would have missed three great bands that left me in a bit of a daze on the journey home. A top night of blackness all round.

(Review and photos © Pete Woods)