Bands: Ulcerate, Pestilential Shadows, Altars
Venue: Gerswin Room @ The Espy, Melbourne, Australia (Naarm, Boonwurrung country)
Date: 1st August 2024
Review by: Ulffe
Photos by: Ben Eldström
Ulcerate, headlining at the Espy for their Starved of the Word – Australasia tour. What a lovely nightmare.
Altars
My ritual when heading to a venue to review a gig is to listen to the bands I’m less familiar with on the way. Plugging into Altars for the first time was an experience. While enjoying their record, I couldn’t quite grasp what I was listening to, I didn’t “get it” but there was something familiar playing on my mind.
As they stepped onto the stage ready to crush the Espy punters, I noticed their drummer was wearing an Akercocke shirt. I love Akercocke. The missing pieces all filled in and everything made sense.
I could tell they might draw inspiration from them but clearly have their own defined sound.
As Altars played to the crowd, their stop start riffs/sections generated solid head banging. Their death metal vocals felt like a kick to the throat. Pulverising the crowd with stomping drums and intense blasts as well as awesome, varied ring outs, crushing riffs and that beautiful live feedback intentionally used to overwhelm with dissonance. Altars reminded me of the more avant-garde in the extreme metal genre. Elements of weird and wonderful mixed with crushing death and grim uncomfortable dissonance in the sickest way possible.
What is with two crushing 3 piece bands tonight!? Bloody huge.
I’ve already since revisited their 2022 album, Ascetic Reflection and love it. These guys are awesome.
Pestilential Shadows
Being unfamiliar with Pestilential Shadows, but knowing their name from the scene- what started off looking like many other old school black metal acts, they took the stage adorned in corpse paint and soon completely won me over by displaying a huge pallette of the death/black metal spectrum.
While the band states they’re death metal on their socials, I can’t help but hear their crossover into black- not just based on their visual themes.
Where Pestilential Shadows stood out from many others was when they performed their 3rd song. Suddenly being bombarded with a huge, emotional guitar solo completely unexpectedly but was extremely impactful as it cut between the raw vocals.
There was a good portion of the crowd that seemed to have been familiar with Pestilential Shadows, and conversely a huge portion of the crowd were completely won over by them tonight- myself included.
Their set was varied in style and sound, there was great use of strobe lighting in their heavier sections and structural climaxes.
Overall, Pestilential Shadows aren’t just another band. They stand out and bring their own flavour to the genre. They have a monstrous energy that pulls you in and builds and builds.
Ulcerate
Where to begin? I’ve lots to say about their 2024 release Cutting the Throat of God. This was the piece that really solidified my love for this incredible act. This album in particular I’ve played through a couple of dozen times already. It comes as no surprise to me as they are currently with my favourite label Debermur Morti. (Check out any of their label mates when you can!)
Getting back to the topic at hand- you can’t judge an album by its cover (but we often still do). Cutting the Throat of God draws you in with its dramatic, haunting, abstract black and red art. Grim, thrilling- completely awesome aesthetically. Very ‘Dark Mofo’ festival.
Ulcerate‘s artistic attention to detail was next level on this night. It was not just with well thought-out, thematic lighting to match their visual art style. It was even between the second act finishing and Ulcerate hitting the stage they were already captivating their audience with their own crushing dark atmospheric sounds, rather than familiar house music.
Finally taking the stage, Ulcerate enter with their album opener To Flow Through Ashen Hearts.
They slam the crowd with despair- slaying the audience with intricate, spider-like guitar work, complex and engaging drumming patterns textured with hard, emotive, grim, driving bass. To generate this sound, Ulcerate have constructed a complex mix of agonising atmosphere, soul crushing vocals, melodic motifs that make you feel like you’ve been pulled into a bleak chasm. With their unique variation and energy, you’d never have guessed they were a 3 piece band.
We were privileged to witness almost the entire album in full, along with a few tracks from prior releases thrown in.
While this album is best listened to in full as it flows so incredibly, they did perform my personal highlights, The Dawn is Hollow, Undying as an Apparition and the title track Cutting the Throat of God.
Their live performance was a perfect way to experience this behemoth of an album- make sure you check it out, and see our New Zealand brothers when they play here again.
Gig gallery
