Review: Sylosis/Decapitated, Marble Factory

Well, this was an odd one. It was billed as a headlining show for Decapitated. But when we turned up, the running order had been reversed, leaving Sylosis with the unenviable task of following the venerable Polish technical death metallers. What’s more, the support act failed to appear, so the roadies amused themselves for an hour or so filling the stage with fog and then shining torches around to locate the gear they’d just concealed so assiduously.

Still, the rowdy, good-natured audience found it was worth the wait, as Decapitated simply carried on as though they were the headliners. A whirlwind of flailing dreadlocks that threatens whiplash burns to anyone within a four-foot radius, Rafal Piotrowski is quite the commanding death metal frontman, his guttural growls a perfect match for the intricate, accomplished and ferocious music masterminded by band founder and guitarist Waclaw ‘Vogg’ Kieltyka. The title track from 2011’s Carnival is Forever sparks a huge circle pit, while the relentless sensory assault lets up just a notch for Nest, which Piotrowski describes quite accurately as “the groovy one”. Driven by Michal Lysejko’s complex drum patterns, this epic from 2014’s Blood Mantra album is arguably the most demanding and impressive piece of music they’ve written, with Kieltyka extracting some extraordinary, almost church organ-style sounds from his guitar that takes Decapitated into the realms of the avant-garde. Not for too long, mind, as it’s back to the crowd-pleasing ‘old shit’ with Spheres of Madness from Nihility, which is greeted like an old, especially gnarly chum by the delirious crowd.

Quite why Reading’s Sylosis would agree to follow that is a bit of a mystery, especially as they’re openly influenced by Decapitated. To be fair, if the audience is slightly depleted for their set, it’s not noticeably so, and this lot are certainly up for Sylosis’s distinctive brand of no-fixed-sub-genre metal. Being unconstrained by such restrictive pigeonholing certainly works in their favour as it gives them a licence to cherry-pick all the way back to old-skool thrash and even NWOBHM, while dodging modern down-tuning metal fashion. There’s also a strong progressive element to their music, which contrives to be grand without becoming overblown and heavily reliant on artificial augmentation. It’s a melange that runs the risk of turning scrappy and disjointed, but impressive founding guitarist Josh Middleton keeps it all on track – even if he’s not the greatest of vocalists. By the time they reach the showpiece combination of melody and brutality that is the suitably celestial Empyreal, any doubts about their headlining qualifications have been dispelled.