Live Review: Better Lovers – Club Academy, Manchester
Support: Greyhaven, Frontierer
19th December 2024
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Coming Soon!
Now that all those Christmas and New Year shenanigans have been suitably dealt with for another twelve-months we can get back to the more important business of live shows; and my first concert hall of 2025 is the familiar setting of the Academy complex’s basement for a rare UK show from the not-as-familiar ‘supergroup’ Better Lovers.
It’s unnaturally quiet in Manchester tonight, even for a Sunday in the middle of January. Happily. that calm has not permeated its way into the Club Academy as Louisville, Kentucky’s Greyhaven is kicking up a hell of racket on their first tour outside of the United States.
Incorporating elements of hardcore, post hardcore, mathcore, metalcore and noise, the quartet hit the stage to In a Room Where Everything Dies from last year’s This Bright and Beautiful World album. Emo-infused and with a Chino vocal, the general feel of the show is one of chaos – controlled – but chaotic all the same. Confined Collapse seems to reinforce that and look deep enough into Sweet Machine’s dissonance and constant pummelling, you’ll find the glimmer of a hook. The Welcome Party begins with cascading guitars only to end up on a staccato drive; Blemish is as widescreen as Greyhaven get but not without its share of breakdown sorcery; and the emotive Echo and Dust, Part 1, from 2022’s sophomore record, Empty Black, prove the band are not merely a bunch of angry noise-mongers.
Not wanting to be outdone, Frontierer pick up the mantel left by Greyhaven and drop deeper into the complex, technical mathcore mire, bemusing and beguiling in equal measure. From the industrial opening of The Skull Burned, with its heavy-hitting beatdowns and ferocious modern extremity, to the torturous squeals of guitar strings pushed to their absolute limits during Lightshow Paralysis, Frontierer deliver a lesson in concentrated brutality.
Rarely killing with speed, the band seem focused on pummelling with sheer weight and volume. At times they sound like a logical successor to The Dillinger Escape Plan, at others their seeming disregard of establishing and maintaining time-signatures is almost straight out of the Danny Carey or Tomas Haake books on drumming. The simplistic light show is obfuscated by the uncompromising tsunami of sound flowing from the PA system, and by the time the band get round to Corrosive Wash and closer, Bleak, it’s as though all in attendance, who’ve made it through, are survivors
Personally, I’m always dubious about the term ‘supergroup’ as it rarely denotes a collective greater than the sum of its parts. Better Lovers, is one such ‘supergroup’ though with the added advantage of having its core rhythm section based around a long-standing connection through now-defunct New York band, Every Time I Die.
Add to those Fit for an Autopsy’s Will Putney and former Dillinger vocalist Greg Puciato and you have a combination able to attract a fair-sized crowd on the aforementioned miserable Sunday night.
Formed in 2023, Better Lovers wasted no time in issuing the EP God Made Me an Animal in 2023 and their debut full-length, Highly Irresponsible a year later.
As you would imagine, those releases form the vast bulk of tonight’s show. Lie Between the Lines starts with a fragile introduction, allowing the ambience to settle before charging in with chugging guitars and biting vocals. From the outset it’s clear Better Lovers lean more into the Every Time I Die aesthetic than the Dillinger one. In many ways they are the most melodic of tonight’s acts.
A snappy and speedy Sacrificial Participant finds surfers heading stage-ward, the low ceiling of the venue of little concern as the Seek & Destroy-influenced lick bridges into the chorus. Better Lovers quickly dispel the ‘supergroup’ tag and show themselves to be the equal of any band on the circuit today; Your Misplaced Self is short and makes its presence felt through sheer will alone; the earlier Become So Small, from the 2023 EP finds a band who were discovering their style, and Superman Died Paralyzed sees Greg in more familiar territory.
There’s scant audience interaction, but that is of no concern, as isn’t the short duration of the set. There is as much energy on show in the band’s hour upon the stage as you’ll find anywhere else; the small platform meaning the energy usually used to bound about and fill up the space is put into the music and thrust into the audience.
A White Horse Covered in Blood chops and changes throughout; Drowning in a Burning World has a huge breakdown, and Future Myopia slugs away with unbridled power. My highlight was the title track of God Made Me an Animal, with its opening barrage, switching to a pseudo-croon at the mid-point, showing a band without limitations.
Love as an Act of Rebellion is a multi-layered, polyrhythmic set up for the distinctly Dillinger-esque first single, 30 Under 13, ending the show on a high and leaving the door open for more music in the near future. There’s much to be admired about Better Lovers and the fact that all members found fame elsewhere is not one of them; that they create and play with such aplomb is of far-greater importance.
Photos from the show coming soon!
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