Live Review: Vio-lence – Preston

Live Review: Vio-lence – Blitz, Preston

Support: Kuazar, Exhorder
19th April 2025

Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch

While perhaps not reaching the uppermost echelons of the Thrash scene back in the day; or even being mentioned in the same breaths as Testament or Exodus, Vio-Lence were always firmly ensconced in that best-kept secret seam, that only the die-hards knew about, also including names like Forbidden, Death Angel, Flotsam & Jetsam et al.

Unlike those contemporaries, Vio-Lence did not venture to these shores until their 2022 Bloodstock Open Air appearance and, genre-defining as their Eternal Nightmare debut and its 1990 follow-up, Oppressing the Masses, were, the band seemed destined to become a footnote in Thrash history, noteworthy for being the training-ground of Robb Flynn and Phil Demmel prior to forming Machine Head.

But, with that second record having reached thirty-five and starting to make old noises when standing from a chair, Sean Killian has gathered together a cohort worthy of the Vio-Lence name and embarked on a debut tour of these shores, including this stop at The Blitz in Preston.

Seems to have become an Easter tradition that an Eighties thrash band makes a stop over the weekend in Preston: Good Friday 2024 saw Acid Reign ripping it up at The Ferret, and Vio-Lence on Easter Saturday… miracles do happen! Wonder who we’ll get next year?

Kicking things off are Paraguayan trio, Kuazar who are happier to be in Preston than any one has been seen to be in years. From the outset theirs is a sound that is straight out of the Sepultura c. Beneath the Remains / Arise playbook. Unsurprising, considering the influence of their continent will be ingrained in the band’s DNA.

There’s nothing contrived about Kuazar, instead they’re doing it the way they know how. The title-track of the last album, Hybrid Power, sets the evening in motion through stomping rhythms and some alternative sounds; Obscure & Violent has a Bury Your Dead lick amid the old school chops. There’s a whiff of patchouli in the air and I can’t decide whether it’s real or simply some olfactory hallucination triggered by regression through music.

Silence is a warning about mental health and is the band’s most modern sounding track, invoking the spirit of Gojira through its hooky stomp. Some of the Wrath of God’s more frenzied compositions are wheeled out for the second half of the short set: Truth of Reality and Kuriju, where singer and guitarist, José Gonzalez, gives a history lesson on South America’s most heinous massacre.

NOLA’s Exhorder‘s debut album, Slaughter in the Vatican, is the same age as Oppressing the Masses and the band’s career trajectory had taken much the same path. Yet the youthful exuberance that fuelled the writing and playing of those early Thrash albums has morphed into middle-aged ire, leading to a whole new reason to rail against the world.

A false acoustic opening was de rigueur for maximum thrash effect back in the day and Exhorder create their atmospherics before launching into the debut title track. It’s a ball-out, heads-down, in-your-face, garrotte-yourself-on-a-washing-line slab of heavy thrashing metal; an uncompromising assault that makes your body move in ways it will not like come the morning.

Unforgiven, from the 1992 sophomore album, The Law, is dedicated to all those going to church for the first time this year tomorrow morning; Death in Vain is punchy and opens up a pit while former Cannibal Corpse / Nevermore man, Pat O’Brien, wrings tortured howls from his guitar.

Exhorder released a fourth full-length last year: Defectum Omnium, and we get a couple of new ones. Year of the Goat, according to main man Kyle Thomas is the album’s most upbeat tune, coming over with a more modern vibe. The following The Tale of Unsound Minds is as slow and doomy as you might expect from a band with NOLA roots, laced with some Grungy moments, it comes in from way-out in left field.

The band play out their set with a stream of old school classics from Slaughter; Exhorder and Desecrator wrap things up and remind us - should it need to be said – that the Thrash scene didn’t start and end with the more successful acts.

Even though Vio-Lence are thirty-two years since their last full-length was released, with only a couple of extended players filling that time, the chance to see them is not one easily passed up. They boast the first real lightshow of the evening, with their Camina Burana intro tape running into Liquid Courage’s unapologetic whiplash thrashing. Subterfuge finds Sean Killian hanging over the front of the crowd. The way the light catches his smooth cranium he looks all the world like the vampire, Barlow, from the original ‘Salem’s Lot.