Live Review: Mountain Caller - The Black Heart, London
19th April 2024
Support: Lore of the Woodman
Words & Photos: Jacob Schwar
Mountain Caller, our very own neighbourhood post-metal trio, were at The Black Heart in Camden Town and rather spectacularly playing to a sold-out gig! This great response comes with the release of their new album ‘Chronicle II: Hypergenesis’ with tonight being an official album launch celebration with some excellent support from Lore Of The Woodman, this gig was going to be something special!
The supporting act for tonight were Milton Keynes’ proggy instrumentalists Lore Of The Woodman who displayed some truly tight musicianship as they performed a truly ethereal and emotion packed set. With them being a trio, you could really appreciate each member individually in what they bring to the overall sound, props to their bassist especially who had me mesmerised with his finger-work throughout the set!
The band would perform a majority of tracks from their debut ‘Leave Everything Aside Now’ (2021) such as the dreamy ‘Treeline’, the groovy ‘3AM’ and the intensely proggy ‘Lucid’ which opens up as this funky number before transforming into a calming, dream-like sequence, a real set highlight undoubtedly. Overall, their live sound is purely ‘dreamy’ bolstered by intricate guitar rhythms, warming bass melodies and some complimentary drumming that doesn’t overstep in anyway, altogether the sound takes you to another world entirely which is what all music should do unquestionably.
Up next were tonight’s headliners Mountain Caller, a band I’d seen before as a support act only a year ago and here they were playing to a sold out audience, spectacular! They opened up with a new track ‘Daybreak’ from their recent release which excellently demonstrates the soundscape of Mountain Caller switching between progressive, stoner and even some doom metal in the mix before culminating in a chuggy feast of heavy riffs!
Up next was the ‘The Archivist’ with its full-on doomy approach which saw guitarist Claire Simson laying down some crushing guitar work alongside the pummelling drumming of Max Maxwell whilst all interwoven by the crunchy bass playing of bassist El Reeve, making for a truly epic live sound!
They’d follow-up with some great numbers such as the dreamy ‘Dead Language’ which was pleasantly surprising in that it features vocals by El Reeve which really sees Mountain Caller adding another layer to their already expansive soundscape as well as the truly epic ‘Dreamspirals’ which was ethereally grandiose in the live environment with its broodingly doomy sound.
The band even treated us to an encore with the song ‘Beyond This Black Horizon’ which is Mountain Caller at their finest, demonstrating all that I’ve mentioned here such as crushing instrumentation, progressively dreamy sequences with it all packaged up in this massively epic sound, a fitting end to a sold out event and a strong sign that Mountain Caller are a band to keep an eye on.
Photo credits: Jacob Schwar
