2025 is off to a good start for extreme metal as one of the biggest co-headline tours of the year makes its way through the UK – up and coming symphonic deathcore outfit Shadow of Intent and one of the most beloved bands in deathgrind, Cattle Decapitation. Revocation and Vulvodynia also joined as support.
The lights went dark and The Lion King theme filled the room as Vulvodynia made their way to the stage. Vulvodynia was a perfect start to the show, the pummeling blast beats and wild guitar work from ‘Psychosadistic Design’ inspired vicious mosh pits almost immediately. ‘New Century’ was still slowly filling up but it was instantly clear that the center of the room was hostile territory.
The groovier slam inspired tracks like ‘The Rand Lord’ and ‘A Cosmic Betrayal’ were highlights of the set due to their ability to maintain a groove you can dance to while still being monstrously heavy but also being able to speed up seemingly at random. The final song of the set, ‘Unparalleled Insubordination,’ saw the venue being devoured by a massive circle pit as vocalist Lwandille Prusent forced out the most visceral and putrid vocals possible. To the people who aren’t versed in death metal culture, this is a good thing.
Vulvodynia are an incredibly complex band from a technical standpoint. The inclusion of abrasive breakdowns and caveman riffing would give the illusion that Vulvodynia are a meat and potatoes deathcore band but the technical sweep picked guitar solos proved there was so much more to them than sheer brutality. Despite only performing a short set, Vulvodynia made a tremendous first impression and set the tone for the night: pure sonic violence.
Next up was Revocation, a super technical death/thrash band led by the legendary Dave Davidson. Revocation’s sound takes the rubbery and spacious riffing of Morbid Angel and blends it with the bizarre chords of Voivod to create something uniquely abrasive and bizarre.
The band played their diabolically heavy new single ‘Confined of Infinity’ which helped animate a skeptical audience who wasn’t sure what to make of Revocation. There’s a wealth of weird HP Lovecraft inspired cosmic horror on tracks like ‘The Outer Ones’ which begins with oddball legato passages before getting into the pummeling riffs.
Revocation are highly recommended if you like your death metal beatings with an unpredictable and weird progressive nature. The universe and all it’s horrors has become a technical death metal cliche but Revocation are able to present in a new and unique manner that’s without becoming too off the walls. Imagine if Cynic made Morbid Angel’s Domination and you’ve got something that vaguely resembles Revocation.
Up next was the first co-headliner and the biggest draw of the night, depending on who you asked, Shadow of Intent. Following an ominous symphonic intro, the band were straight to the point with ‘We Descend’ and ‘The Horror Within,’ both balancing the tempestuous symphonic elements with hard hitting deathcore. This sound has a borderline doom metal vibe as the tracks always have this foreboding sense of impending horror, it makes for a brilliant atmosphere.
The immediate comparison you can make is to Lorna Shore due to the symphonic elements and the fact that both bands are part of the arms race to create the most monstrous vocals possible in the deathcore scene. Vocalist Ben Duerr sounds utterly inhuman at times and his performance really helps fill out an already intense sound.
Tracks like ‘The Migrant’ and ‘Battle of the Manginot Sphere’ feel really progressive and seem to have the structure of a suite with their clean intros and moving parts ranging from apocalyptic insanity to a slow grinding feeling of impending doom. There’s always something interesting going on in these tracks including massive sweeping technical guitar solos and absolutely devastating blast beats.
A deathcore set would be incomplete without a violent wall of death and Shadow of Intent ensures this was a full set. During ‘Malediction,’ the room split open and braced itself for a cataclysmic event as the center of the room became completely inhospitable. There may be a clear divide between fans of Shadow of Intent and Cattle Decapitation but it’s clear that everyone was ready to throw down as the crowd licked their wounds and got ready for Cattle Decapitation.
Cattle Decapitation was the final band of the night. There were many people who were at the band’s last show at Rebellion, even vocalist Travis Ryan commented on how big New Century was compared to Rebellion. Seeing as this was a bigger venue, there was less chance of being caught in the crossfire of the pit and there was plenty of breathing room to enjoy the grimy intensity of Cattle Decapitation.
The band was still supporting the universally beloved Terrasite and committed to the bit by having a cockroach on the mixing desk and if this is what a cockroach can do at the mixer then we really need to allow more insects on a touring crew. The mix was absolutely flawless, the drums were pummeling, the guitar tone was clear as day, the bass was audible without taking over the mix and the vocals were monstrous.
Cattle Decapitation are not only masters at creating the most harsh noise imaginable, they’re also adept at writing songs that have memorable hooks like the iconic ‘Bring Back the Plague’ which also featured guest vocals from Ben of Shadow of Intent. Vocalist Travis Ryan said “this song is dedicated to all of you” before blasting into the song and laying waste to the audience. The whole set was littered with vicious right hooks from the blood curdling shrieks of ‘We Eat Our Young’ to the sledgehammer strike of ‘Living Breathing Piece of Meat’ which features the universally recognised symbol of carnage: the snare count in.
The show ended with the doom laden outro of ‘Death Atlas,’ a grand declaration that we as a species need to be destroyed so that nature can rebuild over the corpses of its tormentors: a grim thought but one of the most metal outlooks on humanity you could have. Personally, I’m still holding out hope that ‘Just Another Body’ will end the show one day but for the moment, ‘Death Atlas’ is a phenomenal way to end the show.
It was somewhat disappointing that a chunk of people had left, a co-headline show is usually a marriage of two separate audiences and there’s usually some crossover but perhaps not as much as previously expected. Death metal and deathcore are at odds at times but this was still a bill that had a high likelihood of impressing everyone. Hopefully Cattle Decapitation someday will be big enough to have screens behind them so they can play the ‘Forced Gender Reassignment’ video.
