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Review: Fear Factory/Butcher Babies/Ignea/Ghosts of Atlantis, SWX
Symphonic metal is a primarily European/Scandinavian phenomenon, whose exponents prefer to augment their music with grand productions. Coming from somewhat less glamorous Ipswich and finding themselves at the bottom of a four-band bill, obliged to play just before 6pm while Saturday shoppers are still milling around outside the venue, Ghosts of Atlantis have to cut their cloth accordingly.
Pleasingly, however, they’re fully costumed and war painted and opt to just go for it as SWX fills up. Showcasing songs drawn mainly from their second album Riddles of the Sycophants (insert your own contemporary political quip here), they make effective use of clean and harsh vocals, leaning towards the death metal end of the spectrum.
is needed now More than ever
Maybe there’s something in the East Anglian water because some of this stuff is reminiscent of latterday Cradle of Filth. The sound is a little muddy and they’re occasionally overwhelmed by their own backing tapes, but this forgiving audience treats them like conquering heroes.
There’s a Ukrainian flag tied symbolically to a microphone stand in the centre of the stage as we wait for Ignea to appear. Proving that there’s more to Ukrainian metal than Jinjer, the symphonic/progressive metal quintet are eager to play us songs from their new concept album Dreams of Lands Unseen, which celebrates the life and work of their fellow countrywoman Sofia Yablonska – a renowned 1930s travel writer and photographer.
Although they only have time to play half a dozen of these lengthy compositions, Ignea radiate genuine delight at being here. The band pull off this technically demanding, frequently keytar-driven material as though they’re headlining the show and those who aren’t already converts are swiftly won over.
Frontwoman Helle Bohdanova bounces around the stage and proves equally adept at guttural growls and melodic singing. She also seems to have been sponsored by the Ukrainian Tourist Board (if such a thing still exists), such is her enthusiasm for us all to come and visit “when we have won and it’s safe to do so.”
Ignea are a very hard act to follow and the somewhat depleted Butcher Babies aren’t really up to the task. As on their previous shows here, the Americans have no shortage of energy and stage presence, but it’s their songs – or lack thereof – that let them down. What’s more, Carla Harvey is absent for medical reasons, leaving Heidi Shepherd to handle all the vocals. That proves doubly challenging when her microphone dies – twice – leading to long, embarrassing pauses.
But while it’s functioning, she makes an excellent job of fronting the band, while headbanging furiously throughout and conjuring up a vast mosh pit during King Pin. Indeed, it’s hard to fault the musicianship of the blokes who nobody notices.
But it’s only when the band try something a little different from the usual furious bluster, such as the dancey Beaver Cage, that the show threatens to take off. Ending with the ballad Last December was also a really bad idea, given that they’d worked the mosh pit into a frenzy and needed to finish on a high.
As countless BBC Sound of . . . acts could probably attest, nothing becomes quite so dated as last year’s sound of the future. Metal plays by different rules, but every so often a band comes along with an album so innovative that it threatens to redefine the genre. After everyone got bored with grunge back in the 1990s (approximately six months after its inception), there was a real hunger for just such an album. LA’s Fear Factory delivered it in the form of their defining release, Demanufacture: a stunning, futuristic industrial metal masterpiece that sounded like a Terminator movie in musical form. Needless to say, this proved hugely influential on the ever-evolving metal scene. The young Devin Townsend was certainly paying close attention. But Fear Factory ploughed on, never really changing their approach as band members came and went.
Nearly 30 years on, they’re still using that Terminator intro. Only self-styled ‘fat bastard’ guitarist Dino Cazares remains from the original line-up, driving the music with his distinctive, mechanistic precision riffing. Taking over from the departed Burton C. Bell, new vocalist Milo Silvestro has “some very big shoes to fill”, as Cazares puts it, but does so remarkably well, nailing those trademark melodies.
Fellow new boy drummer Pete Webber proves equally in command of the machinegun rhythms, in lockstep with bassist Tony Campos. Indeed, given all the ructions and lawsuits over the years, Fear Factory have no right to be as good as they are tonight. They absolutely delight a capacity crowd, many of whom hadn’t even been born when the band rose to prominence.
Songwise, they cherrypick from across their career, going back all the way to debut album Soul of a New Machine for Martyr, but play just Recharger from the recently revisited The Industrialist. Cazares introduces Archetype as “the song I said I would never play live”, to which the only sensible response is ‘Why the fuck not?’ as it works so brilliantly.
Inevitably, the end of the set is packed with those Demanufacture favourites, with the title track, Self Bias Resistor, Zero Signal and Replica played in quick succession, before they leave us with a searing Resurrection from Obsolete. They’re already booked for next year’s Download festival, so their future seems bright – if relentlessly dystopian.
All pix by Mike Evans
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: November 2023
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