Live Review: Kill-Town Death Fest – Friday
5th September 2025
Words: Sam Jones
Cancer Void, as the first outdoor stage band, give Friday afternoon a warm start as people, having recovered from last night’s revelry, stumble back in for another deluge of death metal. A last minute addition and, having checked their first mini-record out recently, I was happy to see them announced. If band on the Black Stage had fewer stage amenities to work with, Cancer Void have even fewer, resulting in a profoundly raw performance that sees depraved vocals uttered with the most heinous of tones. Their frontman wields the microphone stand as if it were his birthright all the while riffs rip and tear with sinuous evisceration. Though the rain intensified throughout their set inside nothing dampened our spirits and Cancer Void left the stage amidst applause.
Galvanizer assail the stage as a hypersonic missile finds its target: deadly accuracy, blistering speed. Half the band are sporting the festival’s most splendid short-shorts bringing a comical yet supremely confident atmosphere to Galvanizer’s performance that, yes indeed, despite what may seem absurd you are fully on board with their belligerent, blunt force impact. What mixing issues the Festival admitted they were having the previous day appear thoroughly solved as Galvanizer’s sound is massive, it swells, expanding, to the point of bursting, whereby the very walls of this old pump house feel woefully prepped for this band’s utter devastation. Galvanizer were the perfect, fierce openers to Friday’s main stage. They absolutely commanded that stage and showed newcomers what precisely they’d been missing out on.
Fleshrot’s riffs cling to the walls like viscera blessed with all the molasses. Their songwriting is more direct, chords are given the chance to hang in the air, a decrepit resonance filling the space, it isn’t long until the crowd are behind Fleshrot for their very first European show. The mix is doing wonders for Fleshrot as even at their fastest they’re still able to convey this crunching, tearing aesthetic and their bass can simply linger, carrying this demonic tone as it passes through one ear and out the other, until the guitar returns resembling a riven fissure in the earth. I loved how the band can bridge sections of a live performances through a searing whammy bar, you know the drop is coming, you’re basking in the wailing severity, so when it finally comes it’s this instance of filthy catharsis.
Purulency however deliver something darker, more putrid, which their stank-face inducing tone achieved with ease. Their tempo is slower, the atmosphere more viscous where it sticks to you long after it’s finished. With the hue of gore thrown upon the band, the crowd in front instantly launches into primal savagery as limbs and hair fly; bodies are hurled in an evil waltz where stage divers surrender themselves wholly to Purulency’s snare. It’s easily the most turbulent crowd yet as I spy one member of Gravavgrav crowdsurfing and stage-side people are going mental as Purulency unleash everything nasty and decrepit in extreme metal.
Reverence To Paroxysm are easily one of the angriest, most seething atmospheric bands of the festival for while their instrumentation seems no more removed from the other acts of today, these guys blend death with black meal infused with the aesthetics of doom. The resulting cauldron is one where the very opening to their slot is set to boiling and there’s no cooling off until their time on stage is done.
Of all of today’s bands, Reverence To Paroxysm are the most evil and archaic act by a country mile; sure we’ve had Purulency and Galvanizer tear their respective stages up but Reverence To Paroxysm present something unknowable, something predating celestial Creation, offering us a glimpse to what horrors may have lurked before time began. It’s difficult to juggle these various styles yet these guys have nailed something that’s particularly difficult to define; their sound is punishing, unapologetic yet it’s never so searing you lose all sense of structure.
