Live Review: Archspire – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
8th March 2023
Support: Psycroptic, Benighted, Entheos
Words: Daniel Phipps
Photos: Philip Piskor
It's a miserable Wednesday evening in Nottingham, it's cold and the snow is just beginning to fall. However we are being treated to an evening of technical death metal precision as Tech Trek Europe is in town and that is going to improve things for the death metal fans of the East Midlands.
Looking to escape the snow the crowd packs in early and first up are Entheos. Despite the cramped stage conditions Entheos make use of what little space they have to put on an energetic opening performance. To put it bluntly if your musical instrument does not require you to be seated, at points you were jumping over the stage. The band's modern sounding tech death is fairly catchy and clinically very tightly performed, with a lot of emphasis being put towards the lead guitar sections. The sizable crowd are enjoying themselves as the band gives it all they have to get people moving and into the performance.
Eleven years ago I saw Benighted open for Morbid Angel, I remember them being good but nothing to really write home about. Tonight was nothing like that performance. The French band (or according to Psycroptic our mortal enemies) turn the energy up front from a 4.5 to a 9 really quick. The band fly through a set of furious tracks and for 40 minutes they absolutely pepper the audience with an immense display of brutality with a grind twist and the audience reciprocates with pits erupting upon the command of front man Julien Truchan, who’s dominating stage presence is only topped by his huge ugly guttural vocals. It’s a whirlwind set and really steps up the bar for the rest of the evening.
Psycroptic take the stage and following Benighted the Tazmanian band sound almost slow as they begin. The tempo might have dropped slightly but the energy remains high and power in the performance is definitely on point, with the technical approach having been knocked up a notch as they run through a set covering the bulk of their back catalogue with the material from the latest effort The Divine Council winning over the crowd all night and causing the best overall reaction. Being fronted on this run by Origin & former Skinless frontman Jason Keyser who successfully engages the crowd to create the perfect trifecta of crowd participation (head banging, moshing & crowd surfing) during the performance. Psycroptic exit the stage as we await Archspire.
The headliners Archspire take to the stage to a rowdy reception from the crowd before they launch into the attack. Unfortunately from my perspective the Canadian band falls well short compared to Benighted and Psycroptic. Firstly the sound, which up til now had been superb, takes a step down and I had difficulty during the whole set hearing the guitars, and vocals. This does not overly affect how the band performs as they move through their set and all throughout the kicks are present and correct and sound absolutely vicious but if i'm honest it felt very bland, yes it was fast, yes it was technical but it was also quite stale.
Taking breaks between songs for a fun game of twister along with some slightly obscene stories involving Nottingham’s livestock among other things, the tech death giants still have the crowd eating from their hands as we see numerous pits opening up all throughout. The rowdy crowd don’t even give Archspire a chance to go off stage before demanding more which the band seem all too happy to give them. I might not have enjoyed it all that much but the few hundred other attendees absolutely loved it.
All photo credits: Philip Piskor
