It’s back to the Portland Arms for an evening of different styles, opening with Akilla, a melodic death metal band from Cambridge. Well, they may come from Cambridge but what I heard was Scandinavia and I don’t mean Abba. The guitarist’s Insomnium hoodie which was left next to me by a band member gave a clue. This was weighty stuff, conjuring up distant lands. Knees bent, the lead guy looked Swedish and very “metal”. His growls were admirably pure as epic death metal prevailed. But Akkila are not a clone of someone else. Their structures are both heavy and thoughtful, and I may be imagining things here, but I thought I detected a haunting Middle Eastern strain in amongst the deathly cascades.

I particularly enjoyed “Song of the Seafarers”. It’s a rousing song with heavy, sweeping and moody passages to take us in as we joined in the journey. This resulted in a minor problem as we became so immersed in it that we didn’t realise the song had ended. The band had nice personalities and humour, and recognised the need to gently remind us that what they played had actually finished. We moved from this epic fare to hard and fast Ensiferum type jollity. Passages transformed, and as it was my first experience of Akilla, I have to say that I’d need to listen more to grasp the totality of it. But in the here and now the band were doing a great job and closed up with “Echo”. Again, this was another harsh tale, cleverly crafted with transforming wintry and reflective scenes without ever losing the force behind it all. Akilla are talented musicians with interesting ideas who are not afraid to push boundaries. And they came across as a nice bunch of guys too.

I have reviewed a couple of fuzz style albums recently, and they both left me cold, stoner cold even. But neither of them were albums by tonight’s nominal headliners Stonus, no doubt the inspiration behind the “God Save the Fuzz” tour name. I had a little listen beforehand to their album “Aphasia” (2020) and ep “Séance” (2021) and quite liked what I heard. The experience is in any case different at a live performance and after all, this is what I was here for. The promise was of “sunny riffs and a heavy psychedelic experience”. It was chucking down with rain outside so it fell to Stonus would bring the sun.  40 odd spectators were here for the trip, and a trip it certainly was. If marks could be awarded for openers, Stonus would be 10 out of 10 from me for “Awake”. A bit of old school fuzz rock n roll to get us going was just what was needed. “Awake” reminded me of Hawkwind’s “Kings of Speed”. The rock n roll style nicely morphed into a dreamy passage and then some psychedelic doom before the band played “Aphasia”. The vocalist now sounded like Ozzy.

As an oldie this was like a nostalgia trip for me, with reminders at every corner of someone from the 70s. But fired by the instrumentalists, the band shone even if the sun didn’t with the solid wall of sound. The energy was great. We descended into a deep haze, and closed with that psychedelic vibe. The echoing vocals bounced off the walls as Stonus went deeper and darker with “Mania”. People around me made shapes as if at a hippie fest. Heads swayed in trance-like fashion. Dig that edgy groove. “Sweet Spot” was another example of hypnotic 70s style hard rock groove, and then the doom of “Spiritual” ran through my veins. This is music to infuse and be spaced out to. It was impossible not to move as the drums and bass led the way and dug the deep groove. And around this point I had a reservation: others may disagree, but I felt the vocals got in the way at this point. They work ok on the record but here in the live setting I felt we needed to be free to reflect and imbibe the potent sound without someone trying to sing over the top of it. Also, because of the sound mix, the singer-presenter was inaudible between songs and didn’t enhance the title with any sort of explanation but I appreciate the fact at least that he did announce them. In any case those deep instrumentals were doing the talking and the influencing. The set ended with “El Rata”. Loud as ever, this was fast and hard-hitting but appropriately for this set and the band, we were left in a wonderful psychedelic haze. Good job, Stonus. I may give this fuzz thing another look now. Far out, man.

Akkadian were the closing act tonight. I saw them play at this same venue two weeks earlier. This is far from the first time that I’d seen a band playing concerts close to each other. Akkadian don’t seem to have a lot of material and I couldn’t really envisage them coming up with an acoustic set for a bit of variety as others may do. I could waffle on about gaining a greater conceptual and technical understanding of them as a band, but the long and the short of it is that I enjoyed their monstrous and theatrical performance then, and greatly looked forward to more of the same from them now. And although I fully expected the tight and pungent riffage that is their specialism, unique things happen at every live performance, and my suspicion was that this was going to emanate through the presentation, fronted by the mysterious frontman who occasionally goes by the name of Danny. True to form Danny did his thing, screaming and going through his gymnastics routine on stage. But this time he spent less time lying on the ground like a dead hedgehog in the road and haunting the air with wafty ancient vocal vibes. This was a different and equally intriguing type of performance from Akkadian. Here there was less theatre and even more thunder. I now felt closer to the structure of their songs.

The talent of these instrumentalists is immense. As backbones go, this is one of the sturdiest kind. They remind me a bit of Uneven Structure – rock solid and operating in unison but at the same time mysterious. From the outset, the drummer played as if he’d just had an argument with someone. The guitarists added to the huge wall of sound as we moved the metalcore mania of “Prisoners” to the djentier solidity of “Agenda”. Heaviness seeped through the walls. Akkadian allowed themselves a spot of moody mysticism during their set but while I detected some airiness through the screamed lyrics, and with a bit of imagination, I could picture us snaking through the desert on “Serpentine”, it was the integrated heaviness that I felt. I loved it. Visually Akkadian are interesting. The guitarist and bassist stood in formation as brothers-in-arms, meting out pleasurable aural punishment, while the other guitarist kept himself to himself, popping up now and again for a sardonic comment. This riot of co-ordinated action kept going, the crowd responded to the band’s enthusiasm with similar enthusiasm, and all too quickly we arrived at the last song ”Depraver”.

“My diaphragm’s going to explode” explained Danny medically before suggesting that if we had come for a Sunday night boogie, here was it. The crowd was up for it. It was like a train in motion. Power, motion, heaviness, power, motion, heaviness … the machine ran on. Akkadian brought the house down. So of course this meant we needed an encore and we got that with “Black Sand” – one final blast of utter adrenaline. The crowd responded. Brilliant. I confess I didn’t pay too much attention to their set list, as I was more interested in the spectacle, but all this information and indeed everything you could want to know about this band other than their dietary preferences is on their web site https://www.akkadian.co.uk. And check out their music too. I don’t know when my next dose of Akkadian is going to be, but I look forward to it. If taken at least once every two weeks, Akkadian is a remedy which removes all evils. And if it doesn’t, live music certainly does. Credit to all three bands, their support and to the people at the Portland Arms for another great night out.

Review and Photos Andrew Doherty