Bands: Full of Hell, Thou, KILAT, ISUA
Venue: Stay Gold, Melbourne, Australia (Naarm, Woiwurrung country)
Date: 17th August, 2024
Review by: Jess JRoc
Photos by: Ben Eldström
ISUA
Let me start by saying this was one of those gigs I’ve been looking forward to since it was announced. The biggest weekend in heavy music for me personally, among many others in Melbourne. I’m going to sleep like the dead on Wednesday.
When I saw this tour announcement, the first band that came to mind as the perfect support was ISUA, and I’m so glad they made the bill. Kicking off at 20 past 7, the band takes position, with frontman Mikey gesturing the crowd to assemble, opening with huge guitar riffs & dominant drums, ripping the lid off for the biggest night in low, heavy, loud noise at Brunswick’s Stay Gold.
At one point a snare stand collapsed, likely due to the heaviness of their beyond-5-minute tracks, taking you on a rhythmic, headbang until every last note.
Playing one of my personal favourites right in the guts of their set, Trench Mouth from their 2023 release and debut full length LP ABANDON, the room was gridlocked, full, and faces slapped with grimaces of the highest approval. I fucking love ISUA, they are the local 5 piece playing the right shows, catch them any chance you get.
KILAT
With one upturned soft blue light doing all the heavy lifting, the stage was dark, and the feedback was loud. KILAT outdid themselves on this show, it has been months since I’d seen them, with their return to the stage after 7 months last weekend. It was an unbelievably rich atmospheric wall of noise. They are a 3 piece, but if you didn’t know that, you’d be forgiven for thinking all that force didn’t come from just one guitar.
It’s the ritualistic elements to the start of a KILAT show I really appreciate, almost like preparing you for what’s to come in some way. Karina Utomo’s silhouette, and fierce vocal range throughout a set that was seemingly the heaviest I’d ever seen them, featuring a powerful slowness that made me forget where I was.
It’s Rama’s drumming that ties it together, he really is a master at his craft and I don’t know how he keeps up. It’s beyond impressive, and it leaves you feeling chewed up and spat out, in the most wonderful way. Their album Rentai Penjinak is raw, expansive, brutal black metal from start to finish. If you want to become a hat person, they just dropped embroidered caps, I’d get one if I was you.
Thou
To say I was jumping out of my skin for this set was probably an understatement. I hadn’t seen Thou since 2022, and it was a surprise set announced on the day of the Dutch Roadburn Festival. As friends of the festival they put on secret sets, so once you hear the rumour, you’ve gotta start running. I tell you, I’ve never ran so fast down cobblestone streets in my life.
Unsuspecting when you first see them, Thou casually take the stage for their first of two shows on this tour in Melbourne. Now forever is a long time, and for their first visit to Australia, forever was worth the wait to see this band unapologetically destroy every single body in the very sold out room.
With a set honouring their back catalogue and their latest record Umbilical (which I went and bought as soon as the show finished) opening this dance with Siege Perilous, buckle up kids, it’s about to get grim.
Vocalist Brian Funck pierces a hole through you if you dare make direct eye contact, teasing by saying “is that all you’ve got, it’s about to get slower”. The crowd was together, with one or both fist in the air, a pit of shit eating grins, 45 perfect minutes of prolific abrasion and an uncontrollable rhythm of heads slamming with every note. Feeling the end close with no stone left unturned, we were finished off with tracks from their 2012 release, Algiers.
I could talk forever about how much I love Thou, and I think there’s no doubt this won’t be the last time they visit us. See the show on Monday if that wasn’t enough for you. As soon as their set ended, I bought myself a ticket, so I’ll see you there.
Full of Hell
Someone said to me after the show “when you see the vocalist with a shaved head and a white t-shirt you know you’re about to be destroyed” and I couldn’t have agreed more.
With a bright smiling face Dylan Walker on vocals & noise gives us a pleasant “Hello Melbourne” before throwing us in the fire with huge deafening vocals, the band douses us in a ballistic explosive rip through of tracks from their rich discography.
Energetic throughout, it’s sometimes hard to fathom how their drummer defies time, and possibility. They dropped an album earlier in 2024 just short of this tour, so we got to immerse ourselves into a taste of what we’d be in for. Coagulated Bliss delivers, it’s fucking brutal, Bleeding Horizon is one of my favourite tracks on this record so far.
Full of Hell aren’t strangers to an Australian show, but it’s been a while between drinks. Furiously taking over Footscray’s The Reverence bandroom back in 2015 with Whitehorse, it was the first time I’d seen this powerhouse of the band that continues to defy heaviness and continually experimenting with release after release, since then I’ve never seen anything that resembles the same set, which is why I love this band so much.
Their last collab at the long running Make It Up Club was on a Tuesday in November a long 9 years ago, the next will be this coming Tuesday the 20th August the day after their final Melbourne show. It’s a beyond stacked line up of Melbourne’s top artists, I won’t tell you that you should be there, but if you aren’t you’ll miss the beautifully improvised chaos, impossible to be repeated.
In a nut shell, this was a massive night, with every band crushing in their own right, Full of Hell ripped what was left to shreds and it couldn’t have been any more destroying. Unreal.
Gig Gallery
