Voices straddle the line between black metal and post-punk
STU GARNEYS
IT’S SUNDAY IN Camden, but it’s also Bank Holiday weekend, so there is a healthy enough crowd for tonight’s openers LOST BRETHREN, who, despite being a little rough around the edges, dish out some satisfyingly chunky death metal. The Black Heart can barely hold RED METHOD, though. The London oddities, featuring the pedigree of former members of The Defiled and Meta-Stasis amongst their ranks, are a visual and aural feast that is rarely seen in such modest surroundings. At first the PA struggles mean the band just sound like a soup of noise and some dudes cosplaying as American Head Charge circa 2002, but as the set progresses and the layers begin to separate, you can hear some real craft to what they’re doing. It’s particularly apparent as they perform a remixed version of their self-proclaimed “COVID anthem” Slave To The New World Disorder, which is full of menace, spooky soundscapes and an absolutely humongous riff that grooves like prime Pantera. By the time they leave a full-blown pit has opened up at the front and the reaction they receive as they take their bows suggest they have made a real impression.
If Red Method are the yin then VOICES are very much their yang. The former are lit in scarlet, and make music that’s meaty, instant and dressed to impress. The latter, illuminated in a deep, dark blue and little else, are far more subtle and challenging.
Voices’ music is a puzzle; black metal, goth, post-punk, abstract, ambient noise and piston-like mechanical grinding all clip together in tandem to create something oddly unique, but utterly spellbinding. The band are so shrouded in darkness that you almost have to squint to see what is going on, but vocalist Peter Benjamin is the obvious focal point, leaning back and raising his hands skyward as his phenomenal shriek cuts through the chaos of their music.