REVIEWED: DARK FUNERAL + FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE + EX DEO @ O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON, LONDON

On this momentous milestone of a 30th anniversary tour, iconic black metal horde Dark Funeral will no doubt perform on a scale infinitely more expansive and grandiose than the decidedly middling confines of the O2 Academy Islington. And certainly, as a venue situated in the centre of a nondescript, inner city shopping mall, together with a security crew who wouldn’t look out of place patrolling the cell blocks of HMP Wandsworth, it’s hardly the most inspiring of settings in which to savour the Swedes’ wondrously diabolical back catalogue.

That said, there’s no dampening the palpable aura of excitement among fans before we’ve even so much as set foot inside the venue, with an unexpectedly prolonged delay to admission resulting in a sizeable queue of punters piling up all the way back around the perimeter of the O2 and its surrounding shops (with the aforementioned gothy/metalhead overspill visibly unnerving the early evening patrons of Pret A Manger). Comprising a motley assortment of fans spanning everything from grizzled biker types and weather-beaten gothic couples clad head to toe in black PVC to fresh-faced young whippersnappers decked out in oversized baggy jeans and studded battle jackets, this sight alone speaks volumes for the band’s illustrious, generation-transcending status. And while the choice of support drafted in to join the band on this extensive run of shows bears little sonic resemblance as far as style or genre is concerned, each collective brings with them a theatre and epic scale of performance befitting Dark Funeral’s own intensely absorbing live spectacle.

All gnarly, densely churning grooves, vocal cord-liquefying snarls and lavishly flourishing strings, Ancient Rome-inspired Canadian death metal crew Ex Deo get tonight’s proceedings off to a sonically colossal start. Authentically styled leather breastplates and military regalia luminous and gleaming beneath a blinding profusion of flickering strobes, corrosive vocal talent Maurizio Iacono manifests a formidable presence, spilling forth a tsunami of gargling screams in amongst the bone-splinteringly weighty grooves and knife-edged technical intricacies of newly-released single ‘Vespasian’. Pairing rumbling, intensely guttural growls with high-frequency shrieks caustic enough to rip a hole right through the stratosphere, Iacono revels in the myriad shades of hostility contained within blistering closer ‘Romulus’. Together with gargantuan expanses of pulverising, blackly turbulent groove and intricately snaking riffery for which the frontman’s more established collective Kataklysm has long been revered among fans, there’s also no shortage of epic instrumentation to be witnessed here in rich, amphitheatre-sized abundance.

With their impeccably curated array of elegantly trimmed waistcoats, ornate headgear and ghoulish corpse-paint together with a baby grand piano that occupies a more than sizeable portion of the stage, symphonic extreme metallers Fleshgod Apocalypse go no small distance to defying the Neanderthal, band shirt-sporting stereotype for which death metal has long been notorious. Commencing their set with extravagantly attired soprano Veronica Bordacchini brandishing the Italian national flag in broad, sweepingly grandiose strokes, it’s hard to dispel the decidedly Eurovision-esque vibe of the flamboyant, hyper-theatrical spectacle presently unfolding here before us. However, what is most certainly not a characteristic feature of the aforementioned, annual pop cheese-fest is the absolute, herculean scale, whiplash-inducing pacing and intricately configured artistry underpinning Fleshgod’s brutalising yet lavishly beguiling craft.

With its sumptuous pairing of elegantly cascading piano phrases and crystalline outpourings of lofty soprano finding fans instantly entranced from the moment the inimitable collective first loom into view, the intensely haunting ‘Ode To Art (De’ Sepolcri)’ is generously laden with breathtaking classical musicianship. Comprising the first track featured on electrifying 2024 full-length ‘Opera’, it’s via this haunting slab of cinematic orchestration that we’re plunged into a veritable inferno of sound barrier-shattering blasts and airily flourishing strings. With ample, tautly muscled power pushing forth every emphatic vocal phrase and bombastic blast of orchestration, these exceptionally skilled musicians illustrate immeasurable dexterity in melding together the various contemporary and classical threads of their genre-obliterating sound. Better yet, the two frequently not only complement, but actively amplify and enhance one another, as witnessed in the vast expanses of epic choirs whose delirious, frantically whirling crescendos add darkly compelling intensity to the menacingly unhurried, bass-laden blasts of 2009 banger ‘Minotaur’.

“You’re a loud fucking bunch, aren’t you?” grins Dark Funeral’s ever-diabolical frontman Heljarmadr, surveying the densely packed hordes of fans swarming the venue with a frenzied energy akin to the ecstasies of religious fervour. With the first portion of their career-spanning set pulling together established classics and altogether more current standouts, theirs is a blistering yet ghoulishly absorbing sensory assault kicking off with apocalyptic 2022 epic ‘Nosferatu’. Corpse-painted faces gleaming white and cadaverous in the densely enveloping prevailing gloom, it’s with searing, ceaselessly battering momentum that the Swedes' commence their insanely energised infernal rites. Paired with a plethora of icily entwining, ornate riffery that instantly engulfs us in its cold, lifelessly harrowing embrace, these many innumerable strains of scabrous, elegantly contorting tremolo tangibly reek of desolation.

With every densely bristling texture and airily lacerating spiral of fretwork audibly dripping with decay, choice morsels from the more freshly exhumed likes of 2016’s ‘Where Shadows Forever Reign’ and 2022 masterwork ‘We Are The Apocalypse’ are delectably drenched in nightmarish atmospherics. Extracted from the former of these two thoroughly malevolent long-players, ‘To Carve Another Wound’ blisters with brutally propulsive, death metal-centric energy while, in the same breath, luxuriating in generous measures of morbidly absorbing, blackened riffery. With this impeccable display of civilisation-levelling carnage being only momentarily disrupted by a rogue amp that implodes with a comedic-sounding ’BANG’ midway through the band’s set, it’s in otherwise seamlessly practiced and suspenseful fashion that we segue into a full playback of the band’s eponymous 1994 EP.

Via a visceral slew of starkly hammering percussive blasts and intensely corrosive screams that audibly blister with infernal fire, both the searing ferocity and deftly layered orchestration underpinning this now-historic release have aged like proverbial fine wine. In amongst its various, delectably abrasive episodes of staccato-laden blasts and airily contorting riffery keen enough to cleave flesh from bone, ‘My Dark Desires’ is simultaneously awash with all the wintry, eerily entrancing complexity we’ve come to associate with this influential early blueprint and all that followed thereafter.

Having wrapped up this intensely nostalgic portion of tonight's sonically expansive and momentous anniversary set, we’re ushered, via an intensely ritualistic passage of weightily rumbling percussion, into the lethal, staggeringly anthemic throes of ‘Let The Devil In’. Its blackly turbulent riffery settling into a sultry, darkly reverberating groove beneath Heljarmadr’s supersonic, larynx-shredding screams, and from here, apocalyptic closer ‘Where Shadows Forever Reign’ concludes proceedings in inconceivably ruinous yet lavishly expansive style. Via indescribably frantic stints of ceaselessly battering carnage, onward we rampage through its innumerable nocturnal passages and labyrinthine twists and turns, barrelling headlong into oblivion as the stage lights plunge into impenetrable darkness and a humongous roar of applause rises from the uncontrollably elated masses. Here, in the midst of the heat and frenzy, in amongst the reek of desolation and smouldering hellfire is literal extreme metal history in the making.