Live Review: Heavy Hitter – Manchester

When I first saw this tour was coming to Manchester, I was initially drawn to the fact that Grief Ritual were playing near to me. I had reviewed their debut album “Collapse” for The Razors Edge back in January and it had left a lasting impression, so I headed off to my favourite venue in Manchester to hear these songs live for the first time.

At 8pm promptly, they take to the stage, and invite the assembled crowd to come closer, and then with a huge guttural roar, frontman Jamie Waggatt signals their intent as they open with “Recursion”. With a lone punter windmilling at the front, heads and bodies are now moving along to the crushing rhythm, as “Calcify” rings out, feeling like some sort of slow death. The songs flow well, with “Fault” upping the tempo, and you can hear that pounding from the 5-string bass of Dave Marcovecchio.

The hardcore drops are impressive, and they mix well alongside the melody and ferocity of the music. “This is our first time back in Manchester for a while, and this is off our new record “Collapse”, and it’s called “Spiral” announces Waggatt, and it feels primaeval and heavy as fuck. The slow intensity continues with the belligerent “Bile” and is followed by “Immurement”.

They thank headliners Heavy Hitter and comment that they’ve been having a great time on tour with them, and after the awesomeness of “Scorn” there’s an eerie background introduction and chants of “fuck the state” during “Swine”. We are all encouraged to love your own gender as the deep and gnarly sounding “Gnaw” gets more people dancing, before they end with “Consumed”, a brutal finish to a 30-minute set that was everything I wanted it to be.

I had a big smile on my face as I saw bass player Chris Perezgive a thumbs up to the sound man as the intro tape of Frank and Nancy Sinatra’s “Something Stupid” is played on the PA. Heavy Hitter stroll onto stage before singer Austin Hayes screams “what the fuck is up? We are Heavy Hitter from Florida” and what happens next is bit of a blur. My mouth is open, jaw dropped, as they laid siege to the venue, opening with “Deposition of Violence”

With the lunatic Hayes bouncing here, there and everywhere across the tiny stage, he shouts instructions like “show me that two step” and the crowd do what he asks. The music is mind blowing, with “Paved in Blood” mixing up the tempos. “This is our first time in Manchester” Austin tells the appreciative crowd, before we are asked if anyone has heard of their “Moments of Misery” EP, which is course most people had, and they ripped our heads off with “Dead End” followed by the savage “Waste of Life”.

They go back to their first EP next, “Street Violence”, as Hayes explains that “Hard Candy” is all about a friend who died from an overdose, and then we get a touching moment, as he continues with “from all of us, thank you for coming out. This is our first tour, and we can’t believe that so many people across the pond know our songs and come out to see us play.”

The rapid set goes back to the “Moments” EP with the astonishing “No Mercy, No Remorse” which gets the dancers going off in even more of a frantic way, and when they play the phenomenal “Curbstomp”, I can feel the floor beneath my feet starting to vibrate and a proper circle pit and a few stage divers, well, bench divers from the side, emerge. They emit some noise, and it’s why I love the Star & Garter so much, as the sound is always bang on.

Each ending is greeted with rapturous applause, and when Hayes announces that this is “one of the hardest songs we’ve ever written” the crowd gets prepared for battle as he “wants to see some violence” as the moshers are asked to “spin this motherfucker” and they do throughout “Heaven’s Gate”. We then get a special treat, as they ‘ve been in LA recording new music which is likely to be out in October. I think it was called “Extinguish Them All” and it somehow ups the tempo even more as it was more mental than ever.

“In 2023 we recorded this song, who knows “Wall of Wax?” well, most people in here by the sounds of it, “where you fucking at Manchester?” and off they go for one final time, the carnage and mayhem on the floor is matched equally by the band with Hayes giving up his mic to a member of the crowd for him to sing whilst Hayes goes nuts on the stage, with a few windmills and kicks. It wraps up 35 minutes of extremely impressive hardcore/metalcore – whatever you want to call it, and boy, were we treated to something special. I’ll be impatiently waiting for their return to these shores.