Live Review : Cattle Decapitation + Shadow Of Intent + Revocation + Vulvodynia @ New Century Hall, Manchester on February 1st 2025

Absence may well make the heart grow fonder but so seemingly does constant interaction. Neither Cattle Decapitation nor Shadows of Intent are strangers to this country and even to this fayre city. It is the formers third visit in as many years, whilst the latter last graced us with their presence twenty-four months ago to almost the day. With neither being a scarcity in the touring market, it is impressive they have managed to pull a capacity crowd into a venue that signals an ambitious jump in size for both of them. This is Death Metal graduating out of the underground and into grown-up venues. New Century Hall may feel a world away from the grubby subterranean delights of say Rebellion, but it offers all four acts the opportunity to do their thing on a gargantuan stage, a challenge they all accept with vim and vigour.

It would be legitimate to ponder who is feeding Vulvodynia’s cats as they seem to be here in the UK more than they are at home in South Africa. They have become an absolute mainstay of this country's slam scene, and they are welcomed with adoration by crowd inpatient to get started on the mindless violence. The beauty of slam is it just doesn't care. It is an unrepentantly repugnant form of music that revels in its nihilistic nastiness. Vulvodynia don't mince words or try to offer any form of subtlety. Every track is a triad of discombobulated notes and squealed refrains. It is majestically brilliant in its untamed organic basicness. This is metal stripped of all its façades and devolved back to its base element.

Following the rather undignified exit of Duncan Bentley, guitarist Lwandile Prusent has put down his instrument and taken on vocal duties. He is a foreboding presence shrieking and grunting into the mic like a man possessed. The rapidly filling room make use of the space afforded to them by creating one mother of a pit. It takes up residency stage front and dominates the venue for the duration of Vulvodynia’s set. It is a whirling dervish of flailing limbs and systematic annihilation. This is metal with all its safety catches off. A stunningly rudimental reminder of just how invigorating primal noise can actually be.

If Vulvodynia represent Neanderthal base desires, then Revocation is the dawn of the sophisticated Homosapiens. This is Death Metal at its most technical and lusciously intricate. The eight songs aired this evening are filled to the brim with ideas and separate passages. The creativeness just flows off the stage in a tsunami of progressive time changes and eclectic shifts in momentum. What grounds it in death metal is David Davidson guttural grumbles. The whole thing has the air of Dream Theater, if they gave James LaBrie the boot and brought in Corpsegrinder as his replacement. 

The opulent surroundings suit them. This is upwardly mobile metal with ideas very much above its station. The pit is much less active this time around and instead the now rampant crowd stand and let the unending musical dexterity wash over them. Whilst David Davidson and Ash Pearson are the only "full-time members" of the band, they come across as an incredibly tight and well-honed unit. Everything convalescences together to create a juxtaposing sound that elegantly marries the brutal with the overtly technical. Stunningly adept and wonderfully excessive.

An evocative sense of anticipation builds in the hall as we await Shadow of Intent. The rapid ascent of Lorna Shore seems to have opened the floodgates to allow other bands of the ilk to enter the public consciousness. Their entrance onto a darkened stage is dramatic and haunting and then ‘We Descend…’ drops like an avalanche of all-encompassing noise. This is symphonic deathcore, think Obituary doing a Bond theme and you are halfway there or even Job for a Cowboy playing over the choral exerts in Halo. It is a perverse and audacious mix of styles that ratchets up the feeling of anthemic indulgence.

It is magnificently big in both its scale and its ambition. The sound tonight is extraordinarily crystal-clear meaning that you hear every sumptuous note and every iota of power of the orchestral backing tapes. The performance of the band on stage is just astonishing. They wring every drop from their soaring melodies and impressive waves of brutality. It is like being on an aural rollercoaster, dragged up to majestic heights and then plunged down into guttural depths. 

The crowd split into two different reactions. There is a good proportion who just stand there blown away by the sheer audacity of the whole thing. But there is a second segment who let the kinetic energy flow through them and proceed to play merry hell at the lip of the stage. The Lorna Shore comparisons are obvious, but so too are the throwbacks to Italian scene leaders Fleshgod Apocalypse. But the originality of what they are doing doesn’t actually matter because they deliver it in such an audacious manner.

The other joyous thing about Shadow of intent is their fierce independence. They have no record deal or management structures, preferring to keep everything in-house. That authenticity shines through tonight in both the legitimacy of their performance but also the honesty of Ben Duerr’s banter. This is a band doing this not because they are enslaved to any autocratic album cycle bollocks, but because they love it. A stunning and wholly successful exercise in combining extremity with the philharmonic.

As they exited the stage in Rebellion last year, Travis Ryan promised that they would be back sooner than we thought. Well here they are again, good to their word, less than eleven months after their last sejour in this city. What is of note is that they provide an almost completely different set list  to their previous show. We again don’t travel any further back than 2012’s “Monolith of Inhumanity” but the nuggets that they extricate this time are different. It is that attention to detail and awareness of fan service that makes Cattle Decapitation special. 

It is obvious that whilst this is billed as a double header, Cattle Decapitation are the main draw. An audience that had seen fit to spread itself out across the luxuriously expansive venue are now clustered at the front, desperate to get as close as possible to the high-octane energy and remorseless power. In many ways this show is bookended with simplicity. The DNA that Cattle Decapitation and Vulvodynia share is a desire to strip away all the impurities and leave a version of metal that is grounded and authentic. Cattle Decapitation are pure route 101 grindcore. Corrosive guitars dispensing buzzsaw riffs. It is been done a million times before but is still utterly breathtaking in its stripped down majesticness.

Travis is particularly chatty this evening, he seems rather down on their last visit to this town but also very keen to make amends. He also takes time to shout out their touring mates and to even bring Ben Duerr out onto the stage. He also makes full use of the vast confines of space that New Century Hall’s expansive stage affords him. He flings himself around, flagellating himself like he is possessed by the demonic spirit of a toddler with ADHD. 

The energy just builds. By the point that they reach the final furlong of the set, the room is a cauldron of sweat and perspiring bodies. ‘A Living, Breathing Piece of Defecating Meat’  is as close to a Carcass love in as you are going to get, whilst ‘Plagueborne’ is just resplendent in its nullifying nastiness. It is harsh and brutal but has enough capacious melody to see it soar outward with majestic intent. 

It all crashes to a halt with “Death Atlas” title track. A final blitz of frenzied energy that sees the pit engulf the whole of the front section of the room. The bodies fly as the crowd makes a concerted effort to break the venue's record for bodies over the barrier. This time around there are no promises of imminent return. Instead, we get thank you’s, call outs and an enthusiastic curtain call.

For a band not backward in getting themselves over here they manage to make tonight feel as good as usual but also simultaneously different. There is no going through the motions here, no autopilot. This is extreme metal with its charred heart on its sleeve. Hostile as hell but also incredibly caring about its audience. A wonderful oxymoron that makes this music the collective endeavour that it is.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!
Cattle Decapitation + Shadow Of Intent + Revocation + Vulvodynia