In the sister suburb to Kings Heath lies Moseley which was once a fairly bohemian neighbourhood which these days has a kind of faded glory. There was a venue there called the Jug of Ale and forty years ago it was the go to gig place, where you could be in with the in crowd. I saw many up and coming bands there such as These Animal Men, Ocean Colour Scene, Placebo, Ash, Menswear and Oasis. It closed and is now a smart Indian restaurant. The go to place in my opinion these days is the Hare and Hounds and it`s here tonight that we have a top notch double bill with two of Belgium`s finest purveyors of heavy, post-metal, come prog rock with Psychonaut and Cobra The Impaler.
Cobra The Impaler are a five piece metal outfit from Ghent in East Flanders, a place renowned for its medieval architecture and castle. They shared a forty five minute set packed with heavy anthems and complex rhythms culled from their two albums `Karma Collision` and debut album` Colossal Gods`. They kicked off with a couple of cuts from their latest release with `Season of The Savage` with its driving rhythms, soaring vocals, and brief guitar solo along with `My Inferno` with its pounding drums and unclean vocals. Just from these first two songs you can see what a tight unit this band are as they share further numbers that are delightfully hypnotic but wonderfully menacing in equal measure. The band move to `Colossal Gods` with the unsettling title track and `The Spirit Of Lyssa`.
The more recent `Shifting Sands has this intimate audience clapping at the opening bars of this intense offering that has singer Manuel Remmerie screaming before heading into the fairly spellbinding `Scorched Earth`. Michélé De Feudis the bass player and singer asks for a round of applause for Manuel before the final submission as he has been singing/screaming with a sore throat as they leave us with the complex `Assassins of The Vision`. Manuel`s t shirt has written on the reverse “Push Right Through To The Centre” and he and the band certainly did this evening.
Stefan De Graef, Thomas Michiels and Harm Peters are the trio who make up Psychonaut, who hail from Mechelen, a historic Flemish city nestled between Brussels and Antwerp with medieval architecture, and a vibrant, compact Old Town. Tonight`s seventy five minute masterclass is taken from the guys last three albums `World Maker`, `Violate Consensus` and the superbly titled `Unfold The God Man`
The quite reflective `And You Came with Searing Light` kicks us off before we head into `All Your Gods Have Gone` with its thrashing drums and searing riffs. `Endless Currents` is littered with complex rhythms before the trio head back intime with the amusingly titled `All I Saw As A Huge Monkey` which was full of recurrent intricate guitar riffs.
The title track of 2022`s `Violate Consensus Reality` takes us on a meandering journey with piped female harmonies giving it a wonderfully ethereal otherworldly quality before veering this way and that way with bursts of loud music blended with much quieter passages. `Interbeing` had a dreaminess about it before exploding into life then treading a more delicate path. The instrumental `Origins` has a kind of world music come Native American influence but that may just be me.
Thomas Michiels, the bass player, and co-vocalist shares that `Endless Erosion` is his favourite track off the latest album as the band head into this varied musical opus. `The Fall of Consciousness` has the faithful clapping along at the start and i`m sure that the fellas offered a brief snippet of Sabbath`s `War Pigs` towards the end, possibly as a tribute to Birmingham`s finest.
The group leave us with a final song which is really a meld of two with `You Are the Sky`…./ `Everything Else is Just The Weather` which was probably apt as we had a crazy mini storm earlier in the day with some almost oblong shaped hailstones.
This was a wonderfully constructed set of light and dark, yin and yang with searing scorching riffs and vocals one minute and more gentle tender intricate and involved passages the next. It was a shame that more people weren’t here this evening to witness two of the finest metalcore bands from the Cockpit of Europe. But for me what the crowd lacked in numbers they made up for in intensity and passion.
