Something’s gone aria with Igorrr’s Aphrodite Patoulidou

Igorrr: JB Le Bail tears senses asunder

TINA KORHONEN

AMENRA / DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT / HANGMAN’S CHAIR

THE FORUM, LONDON

France’s genre-blitzing oddballs find some strange bedfellows

IT’S A SHAME that the sentence ‘This opening act deserve to headline this place’ has been reduced to a platitude, because rarely has it been more applicable than to HANGMAN’S CHAIR. The French quartet have nailed their niche of ‘Sisters Of Mercy, but metal’, layering goth melodies atop a bedrock of lead-heavy doom. Plus, the faultless mix and swirling lightshow bring the kind of theatre usually reserved for the last band on. Give us another hour of this and none would complain.

However, the misery merchants need to pack up quickly, since Kentish Town’s getting the most stacked and varied heavy music bill it’s seen in some time. Offsetting Hangman’s sadness is the exhilaration of DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT. Equal parts black metal, post-metal and existentialism, the Germans dodge all clichés without taking their feet off the gas. Opener Morgen shifts from blastbeats and tremolo picking to neck-snapping sludge breakdowns. It’s dynamism that drives London apeshit – then AMENRA hit the capital with one hell of a hangover. The Church Of Ra’s papacy distil a panic attack into sonic form. On top of the band’s ominous riffing, frontman Colin H. van Eeckhout and bassist/singer Tim De Gieter frantically shriek. They never address their congregation between songs, and Colin isn’t even singing in our direction, yet there’s so much ceremony to this sermon. Black and white imagery is projected behind the Belgians as they blitz through their post-metal hymns, while fog spills out into the venue like the start of a John Carpenter horror.