LIVE REVIEW: Viscera, Osiah, Bleed Again, The Green Door Store, Brighton, 21/05/2022

Photo Credit: Abbi Draper (The Anvil, Bournemouth, 22nd May 2022)

The beauty of a lot of the smaller venues across the British Isles is their quirkiness and individuality. A perfect example of this observation is The Green Door Store in Brighton on the south-east coast of England. The venue is essentially a bar with an intimate stage area at one end, through a black curtain, complete with a cobbled floor and a high ceiling. Tonight, the two hundred and eighty cap former horse hospital is the host to a night of sheer musical battery in the form of the technical deathcore merchants Viscera and Osiah as well as support from the local metalcore act Bleed Again.

The openers hit the stage as the crowd slowly, but surely filters in and give it everything they’ve got. The energy is high, and the band are very proficient in delivering their polished melodic sound, with the kind of scream, chorus scream blueprint. The breakdowns hit like they should, and the vocals are packed full of catchy hooks and emotive resonance and serve well in warming the crowd up before the main supports hit the stage.

Like many small venues the crowd tend to exit to the bar and outside area in between acts and a result Osiah start their set to a virtually empty room. However, as soon as the patrons outside hear the opening onslaught from the Wearside extreme metal merchants they rush back to the stage area and open the pits immediately. These boys know exactly what they are doing and deliver every single crushingly heavy slam, ferocious riff with schizophrenic vocal run with the kind of surgical precision that their fans have come to expect from them over their short career. Despite the fact that the band have a new drummer in their midst (namely Danny Bates, of the bands Tribe of Ghosts and Abhorrent Decimation) the band are tighter than ever and are firing on all cylinders. The charismatic frontman Ricky Lee Roper has the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand with his superb banter and infectious humour. These boys are on the ascension, and it won’t be long before you see their names on extreme metal marquees the world over.

Anyone who has followed the career of Jamie Graham will be familiar with the kind of band he tends to front. In short, they are low-tuned (other than Sylosis) and always heavy as hell. Well, Viscera is no different. From the moment the band take the stage the audience is enthralled. Wrapped up in the band’s infectious grooves and devastatingly heavy, technically astounding deathcore. From the moment the band fly into Sungazer the intimate venue is turned into a hive of activity, with mosh pits, headbanging and mass singalongs. The band then set about playing their phenomenal debut album Obsidian in its entirety and show exactly how well-constructed and thought-out the running format of the release was. Presenting in the way that it was supposed to consumed.

From the scathing, fret-burning Delilah through the impossibly heavy Immersed in Ire and Lamb to The Slaughter the boys show no sign of letting up. The energy from the stage is returned by the crowd in an emphatic manor and ensures that there is no quarter given. When a band of this kind of ridiculous talent and stage presence are hitting their stride, it is truly a thing to see and the fact that the band have put out only one full-length album yet still have the ability to command the stage like a grizzled-old-veterans shows just how far they have come in such a short amount of time (and that is not forgetting that the entire world went to hell via a pandemic just a couple of short months after the release of the aforementioned debut album).

By the time the band dive into Hammer and Nails the audience is at fever pitch and the small room is in danger of being reduced to its very foundations. This track is without doubt one of the highlights of the night with its undeniable groove, machine-gun drumming and pinpoint delivery. Viscera is revelling in the moment and are clearly enjoying every second of being able to interact with their fans. There are certain things that many of us concert-goers took for granted before the pandemic hit and the kind of smile that is etched across the face of Graham as the frenzied crowd mosh away to the title track is one of those things that hits just a little bit harder now post-lockdown.

The idea that Viscera lost any of their forward momentum during the COVID outbreak seems almost laughable now. The band don’t miss a beat the whole way through their set and dictate the pace with an overwhelming sense of ease and confidence. If these are the levels at which they are operating at this early stage of their career then who knows just where this could lead when they move on to their sophomore release. 9/10

Written By: Rich Webb

Photo Credit: Abbi Draper (The Anvil, Bournemouth, 22nd May 2022)