Artists: Aquilus, Suldusk, Plum Green
Venue: Perseverance Hotel, Melbourne, Australia (Naarm, Woiwurrung country)
Date: 11th April 2025

Review and photos by: Ben Eldström

Two of Melbourne’s premier melodic black metal bands celebrated their upcoming tour of Europe with a throng of home town fans, plus good friends to open the stage.

Plum Green
It’s shocking to think it’s been over 2 years since Plum Green have played a Melbourne gig, which is most likely due to their distinctive haunting sound. They dabble in the realm of delicateness and tenderness, with strong underpinnings of foreboding. This combination of calm and unease makes Plum Green‘s music sound like the soundtrack at the beginning of a small-production horror-thriller when the protagonists start wandering into the forest on some loosely believable pretext. Coupled with unyielding and unblinking gazes into the crowd, there’s no shaking the sense of unease they want you to feel.
Disregarding the shared friendship throughout all the acts last night, it’s difficult to think of a better band than Plum Green to have begun proceedings for Forest Liturgies. Add to that the realisation that it might be another few years before we see Plum Green live in Melbourne again, and their performance truly felt like something special to watch.

Suldusk
Moving on to an act that have gifted Melbourne with many live appearances since the release of their second album Anthesis was released just a year ago, Suldusk were warmly welcomed to the stage like old friends – mostly because many were in the crowd. Crammed onto the stage shoulder-to-shoulder, they all managed to put on a roaring performance without putting a foot wrong, in both senses.
Plum Green and Suldusk share a large similarity in their origins, each a vocalist and an acoustic guitar that somehow fit somewhere into the metal genre, yet over time they’ve taken different paths. Suldusk are now focusing on maximising Emily’s ability to seamlessly shift her vocals from the mesmerising lullaby of a siren to the terrifying screeches of a harpy. This emphasis on calm and calamity was in full force as they moved through songs from both their albums, as well as treating the crowd to a new unreleased track.

Aquilus
Despite Suldusk and Aquilus having enough band members between them for two separate bands, only about half leave the stage while Aquilus set up. You’re going to have to trust me that I haven’t recycled photos of Hayley, Daniel, and Zebådee across the two bands!
Changing gears yet again, Aquilus waste no time and immediately dive into their technical brand of prog-black-death. It’s all too common for extreme metal bands to revel in a calamitous sound, but what sets Aquilus apart is that it comes at you out of nowhere. You can listen to their albums and prepare all you like, but the moment you let down your guard during one of their many softer sections is the moment they swing back into blast beats and chaos. There’s something in Aquilus‘ varying and explorative music for nearly everyone, however it’s greater than the sum of it’s parts. Time seems to fly at Aquilus gigs, despite the length and complexity of their songs.

It was great to see a packed Perseverance Hotel to send off both Suldusk and Aquilus for their misadventures overseas. We hope they have an amazing time with similarly full venues, but not so good a time that we lose them out of the Melbourne scene.