Did you have a good Bank Holiday? We spent the Monday evening of ours checking out some metal bands. Birmingham’s O2 Academy 3 played host to Veil Of Maya’s Eclipse tour, which featured no less than 5 bands from across the planet. All of the bands play a style of progressive metal commonly known as ‘Djent’ which is currently making a lot of headway in the metal scene, most famously pioneered by legends Meshuggah who we reviewed a couple of weeks back.
First up were Structures from Toronto, who started things off right. Due to there being 5 bands on this tour everyone played slightly shorter sets than expected. Structures only had about 20 minutes, so they rattled through 4 songs fairly quickly, but were impressive nonetheless.
Next up were Volumes from Los Angeles. The response to this band was so huge that you might have been forgiven for thinking they were headlining. There was chaos in the crowd with most of the room off their feet and absolute carnage in the mosh pit. Definitely one to watch here’s hoping they come back again soon.
Vildhjarta from Hudiksvall, Sweden were there to represent for Europe. Many of these bands were playing in the UK for the first time, and Vildhjarta were no exception. Playing their own brand of ‘North Swedish metal’, they came out swinging to a heavy instrumental song before being joined by their vocalists for the rest of their set. The crowd responded very well to the band as many have had their eye on for a while now and were glad to finally see them live.
Another European representative was up next in the form of Betraying The Martyrs. The band themselves are from Paris, France but they have imported a vocalist from the UK. There seems to be very little of a language barrier between them, but they do all speak the universal language of metal. The band exploded onto stage and the crowd went nuts as the keyboard player/vocalist Victor Guillet threw himself into the crowd almost immediately. They delivered an impressive half hour set before making way for the main event.
Finally it was time for Veil Of Maya to prove why they were headliners, and prove it they did. Hailing from Oak Park, Illinois they were here promoting their newest album ‘Eclipse’. Sadly due to a long changeover between bands they were only left with around half an hour to perform but they seemed to cram the intensity of a full set into that half hour. Ploughing through a set filled with favourites old and new, the atmosphere was electric. After they finished their set the crowd were crying out for an encore, but when they came back to play it they were denied by the venue due to being past curfew.
Another awesome gig to witness, we look forward to catching all these bands again in the future.
