REVIEWED: Kanonenfieber + Panzerfaust @ The Dome, London

With the better part of the UK already gearing up for December and its unrelenting annual onslaught of gaudy, enforced festivity and mindless consumerism, the tail-end of November finds us in an altogether darker and more reflective state of mind. Coinciding with a month that’s long been associated with honouring those many innumerable and frequently nameless victims of the various casualties of World War I and II, tonight’s awaited bill of world conflict-inspired extreme metal promises to be an unimaginably visceral and absorbing experience.

Taking their name from a lethal, bazooka-like weapon purpose-built to blow soviet tanks to literal smithereens, Canadian black metal horde PANZERFAUST deliver a fittingly brutalising yet nightmarishly grandiose assault on the senses. Particularly striking too is their near-cinematic grasp of set design, in which they’ve somehow managed to project a colossal, ink-black silhouette of a human form seen here looming ten feet high above the stage like some grim harbinger of the apocalypse. Half-obscured within the lingering, obsidian-hued gloom of the windowless venue, these genre-crossing aggressors are armed to the proverbial teeth with all manner of extreme trappings and elements. And from gargantuan percussive blasts that rumble and reverberate like the footfalls of a vengeful demigod to scalpel-keen strains of tremolo whose ghoulishly echoing throes luxuriate in icily harrowing atmospherics, Panzerfaust manifest a wondrously disqueting calibre of carnage.

This darkly arresting repertoire concluded, and the venue is once again filled with the familiar hubbub of enthusiastic chatter scattered and interspersed in amongst a jaunty soundtrack of World War I-era music hall classics. And within the grand, classically Victorian confines of a historic venue that has, itself, witnessed both of the aforementioned World Wars, there’s no doubt that we’re in for an incredibly evocative experience as The Dome is abruptly plunged into near-total darkness and a deathly silence ensues.

Then, via deafening blasts of ambient noise and fitful bursts of blinding strobe lighting, it’s with exceptionally sinister and invasive intensity that KANONENFIEBER commence their unrelenting and hugely immersive set. Below the distant yet shrill and unmistakable rain of overhead artillery bombardments, a grave-sounding announcement in German crackles ghoulishly over the PA as the band loom into view, faces shrouded in black cloth, each member sharply attired in traditional military garb. Submerged in rich, distortion-laden lines of guitar whose elegantly unspooling motions palpably drip desolation, the spinal cord-snapping immediacy with which we’re hurled headlong into the searing, machine gun-paced battery of lacerating opener ‘Menschenmühle' sees the Dome instantly transformed into a veritable inferno of frantic motion. Faceless figures half-obscured behind a toxic-looking profusion of mustard-yellow fog, every inch of the Germans’ meticulously orchestrated set is geared to induce maximum unease and horror in the listener via a sensory overload of truly unrelenting proportions. Letting loose a slew of indescribably corrosive screams and lacerating tremolo whose every razor-keen accent audibly bristles with hostility, bone-shattering expanses of percussion here display civilisation-levelling heft and impact.

Sourced from the first part of the 2022 single release of the same name, ‘Der Fusilier I’ comprises another lethal, impeccably calculating weapon of a standout. With its veritable death march of a rhythm section abounding with tautly regimented precision together with all the grim inexorability of an ill-fated platoon marching headlong into oblivion, this is undoubtedly one of the most vicious and sonically inventive items in the Germans’ genre-transcending sonic arsenal. Together with sound barrier-shattering levels of hyperblasting acceleration forged from an intoxicating blend of insanely propulsive, battering snares and weightily contorting bass groove, this is a track also delectably rich in morbidly entrancing atmosphere. Note, in particular, the various episodes of jagged, unceasingly visceral tremolo riffing whose blackly unspooling contortions abound with unspeakable torment, or the elegantly sculpted melodic fretwork with which this darkly compelling number is generously furnished.

Underpinned by an insanely addicting rhythmic backbone of gnarly, densely reverberating grooves that instantly flood the synapses with adrenaline, ‘Kampf Und Sturm’ captures, only too vividly, the monumental, seafaring carnage for which the U-boats of the First World War fast became notorious. Comprising the perfectly engineered soundtrack to a period of history blighted by a truly abhorrent scale of senseless slaughter, a momentary lull in this hitherto whiplash-inducing onslaught ushers in a gargantuan mass of sumptuous, doom-laden riffery, its gracefully unfurling throes palpably weighted with grief and stricken with decay.

Ever committed to the finest of darkly evocative details, the closing portion of Kanonenfieber’s set sees the stage drenched in deep, crimson-red lighting, our formerly shrouded performers each now bearing an elaborately carved death mask, appropriately fashioned in the shape of a human skull. But while these various theatrical accoutrements certainly add a further layer of immersive atmosphere to the whole affair, it’s the raw, unadulterated depth of feeling the Germans conjure forth in every manic, rallying cry and frost-stricken spiral of tremolo that elevates their performance to the stuff of unforgettably disquieting brilliance.

And as the lithe, endlessly twisting twin riffery and brutally propulsive vocal hooks of epic closer ‘Ausblutungsschlacht’ ebb away into nothingness beneath a melancholic flurry of piano notes punctuated periodically by the ghoulish hail of distant gunfire, what we have witnessed here tonight is an experience quite unlike any other. A conjuration of unceasing brutality and immeasurable despair, depicting, with genre-transcending flair and limitlessly evocative intensity, a period of unimaginable atrocity and loss. And alas, as these long, enduring lines of power-hungry corruption, territorial conflict and hate continue to echo down the ages, infecting generation after generation of hapless human beings, theirs is a tale only too relevant to the increasingly troubled times in which we live.