Live Review: Unleash The Archers - Club Academy, Manchester
Support: All For Metal
9th July 2025
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
Having spent the last weekend at Radar Festival, with its three-dozen contemporary/ alternative artists, it felt like something of a change of gear to be covering this pairing of North American and European power metal. But, variety is the spice of life – so They say – and we at The Razor’s Edge are sponsoring the tour, so it’s time to strap on the broadsword, fluff up the furry budgie smugglers and do crunches until I’m sporting a six-pack, and off into the depths of the Club Academy for a meeting with fate.
German/Italian berserkers, All For Metal make only their second stop in Manchester this evening, a little over a year after playing upstairs with Lordi, and the goodwill they stoked that night has come back to welcome them to town once more. Hitting the stage with a single-minded bravado, the sextet has Metal coursing through their veins.
Opener and band anthem, All for Metal, sets the scene for the show as the horde deliberately draw in every cliché from performance. The crowd are in and ready to be taken on a ride into the alter-world of the band’s war-torn, ancient mythology. Raise Your Hammer is a tribute to the Thunder God himself, and is all about the simple, but ever-so catchy riffs. Fist-pumping, chest-beating anthems are the order of the day, with the dual vocals of Tim Schmidt and Antonio Calamna fitting together like pieces of a puzzle.
Born in Valhalla seems so obvious that it possibly manifest itself at the feet of the band as they began their endeavours, Mountain of Power combines pagan voices and gothic sensibilities and When Monsters Roar comes with a scream off between the ladies and the gents of the crowd.
Monsters… is only one of two songs from All For Metal’s most recent record, the other being the title-track from 2024’s Gods of Metal, the kind of album title usually found among Manowar’s discography, and certainly custom-made for some vast and heroic Heavy Metal.
Final song, Goddess of War is dedicated to the ladies in the room, closing the set with bristling metal bombast.
Next British date on All For Metal’s calendar is their Thursday night special guest slot where the combination of beer and the first night of Bloodstock will see a show for the ages. Start drinking now!
Hailing from British Columbia, Canada, Unleash the Archers use power metal as the foundation of their sound, veering into melodic death metal and back again as the need arises. The Europeans may have warmed up the crowd, but these Canucks haven’t trekked all this way to have the spoils snatched from under their noses.
Three tracks back-to-back from the 2020 Abyss album, Abyss, Soulbound and Faster than Light drive the band’s flag into the ground for the evening. Crunchy riffs and booming percussion, coupled with angelic to some / demonic to others vocals from Brittney, sets the stall out and Unleash the Archers mostly keep within that framework.
My only other expose to the band came at Catton Park last summer, where their sound seemed to lose some of its potency as it drifted into the air. No such fear tonight, as the low ceiling of the Club focuses the output into an uncompromising wall of noise.
“We’re not going to go easy on you tonight” warns Brittney, as she recounts the last time the band were in Manchester, before the days of the plague, up at Satan’s Hollow. A trip down Memory Lane leads us into Awakening, from the Apex album and surely one of the band’s most accomplished songs.
Epic Helloween vibes and boisterous Maiden gallops charge through this journey of a tune, showcasing all that is good about the band as individuals and their collective nature as Unleash the Archers.
It’s announced that there is an intention to revisit and reshape the Time Stand Still record for it’s tenth anniversary, and Tonight We Ride and Test Your Metal show the development of the Archers’ sound, with the former being a speedy whipping around the fretboard, and the latter being build off a meaty riff. Some Maiden-esque bridges and deathy growls add to the broad scope of the tunes, whetting the appetite for that revamp.
Last year’s Phantoma album is left to the end of the set, with four of its tunes taking the set into its climax. Ghosts in the Mix is a modern take on the Archers’ aesthetic, Green & Glass comes with a speedy, agile opening section, laying down some fat guitar lines.
Brittney calls Gods in Decay her favourite song on the new record, leaving only the gothic melancholy of Blood Empress to see the band offstage.
Encore is the band’s cover of Stan Rogers’ Northwest Passage, a celebration of all things Canadian, loaded with heaps of Blind Guardian pummelling and fist-pumping.
I’m not the world’s biggest Power Metal fan if I’m being brutally honest, but more shows like this one and I might start to change my mind. The folk who clearly were PM fans appeared to be having a whale of a time.
Photo Credits: Tim Finch Photography
