Reading Metal To The Masses – Heat 3!

Heat 3 of Readings Metal To The Masses commences with Surrey/Hampshire Death Metal band End of Salvation.

With dark eyes the band bring an immense sense of doom and debauchery over The Facebar. Vocalist Ryan makes the most of the people that are here by getting involved in the front of the crowd. His vocals do reign a doom like presence. Brutal is the main word that must be used to describe this band.

Throughout one track we see a short Guitar solo from Frank Clow. The crowd sing “I will have my revenge” – it seems the crowd know this track ‘Worthless’. Next track ‘Serpent Messenger‘, both taken from the bands debut album Monolith Of Leviathan.

There is great head banging from the crowd, encouraged by the guitar players in the band as they unleash their locks. “Since we have a bit more time, we can put the Jesus song in, it’s called ‘Resurrection’“. It’s pretty brutal, as each sing is. Ryan’s vocals reach a new low, like the hills have opened, and the underworld king is about to spawn a barrage of deathly creatures. 

Bird Brain Mafia up next! They seem to play a whirl of styles, but I can dig it. They are constantly fun, and at times a tad edgy. The lead vocalist jumps into crowd, spins around, puts the mic in fans faces. Guitar player is then in then crowd, starts his own mosh pit. To this I gotta say – great crowd interaction!

A lot of my notes from the night say the words ‘funky’ and ‘groovy’ and then I wrote ‘Sounds like an advert’. Pub vibes is all good with me after a few ciders.

At the end they play a cover of Clutch’s ‘Electric Worry’, it used to be standard that unknown bands play a cover to get the crowd going, and Bird Brain Mafia prove its still a very worthwhile technique.

Violence Is Golden. First things first… the drummer is dressed as a bunny, as is the guitarist. Talking with vocalist Mark “Shrimp” Gibbs after the set he tells me this was purely for Easter. However as he mentioned during the set, his band mate have been known to surprise even him with these outfits, once they dressed as Pirates, another time as Snakes.

They get the crowd going, there is headbanging, Bunny guitar player heads round crowd for a bit of a bounce. They introduce a track as “The Lamb of God” track, however it’s called ‘Apostate’. I can see why they call it that, and it makes me want to watch them on a big festival stage.

‘Stomp’ is another great track that was played, followed by their “traditional ending song, it an easy one, it’s called ‘Who The Hell'”. Southern sounding guitar at first, very raw sounding. They get the crowd clapping along to this one.

What strikes me covering these Metal To The Masses gigs in Reading, is that every band playing is so appreciative of every single person in the room. They are very excited to play in front of the crowd. An important trait to remember and hang onto for any band.

All bands tonight have the potential to reach the next level, and play in front of the masses!

Support the local music scene. See the dates for the next heats below: