Lucy Dunnet
The air is thick with something greater and more mutinous than the stench of London’s inescapable heatwaves, as Mutagenic Host rip off the lid to tonight’s death metal slaughter. They were last seen – or not seen, so packed was their set – at the Underworld during Incineration Festival 2026, and the months have crawled by in anticipation of their sludgey chaos to once again rattle some skulls and plague some eardrums. Roars of “up the Host” attest to the devoted fanbase building behind these brutal Londoners, as does the sloppy, slashing mosh pit that smacks through the front of the crowd a few songs in. Tracks like Genestealer up the crazy in the room, all down-tuned grizzly riffs and searing growls from frontman Ash Moore. But when someone shouts for them to play Genestealer a few moments after they have…just played it, the band’s menacing demeanours break as they laugh out, “we just did!” London hasn’t quite been crazy enough for Ash, however, as he informs the crowd that just last night they were in Leeds at a “proper tiny metal show” where everyone was stage diving: “let’s get this up a gear”. A lone, but determined diver stalks onto the stage to do Mutagenic Host’s bidding, warming the crowd’s arms up before Ash performs his own dive to end their set on the “stupidest” note possible. Filthy, cell-bludgeoning fun. Up the Host.
“Let’s spin this shit.” Thomas Cronin is staring, nay, glaring at the crowd to whip up the kind of chaos he clearly knows London’s death metal kids, gals, and grandpas are capable of. Celestial Sanctuary are tonight’s second death metal act from London, and are another group that, when mentioned to any metalhead worth his weight in satanic gold, incite serious head nods and murmurs of “hell yeah, Celestial Sanctuary rip.” They are the lethal force of artillery in war, meeting savages scavenging through a celestial landscape, and they build tension like it’s a matter of life or death. When a circle pit breaks out, you can even see the Mutagenic Host boys egging it on with spinning hand motions from the side of the stage. “This show was supposed to be downstairs, so let’s stomp across the room and take it back downstairs!” screams Thomas. They won’t accept anything less than an ass-shaking, headbanging extravaganza of “fucked up shit” to their “fucked up songs”, and as their grooves grind hard against the belching terror infused into every one of James Burke’s blast beats, the heat and rage levels turn red. One particularly ferocious fan charges so far out of the pit he’s almost at the merch stand before he finds his friend to drag him all the way back in with him for the final Celestial Sanctuary march of swaying savagery.
From the hallowed grounds of Bloodstock to the not-Camden North London slopes, the Cleveland-based 200 Stab Wounds bring with them a set of seriously good, golden-old-school death metal. The quartet ooze charismatic serial killer presence, with stomach-lurching riffs and death growls as their lethal weapon of choice. Think Hannibal Lecter’s charm with a hint of Jack the Ripper’s commanding terror, and with the red lighting haze and barely faded heat from Celestial Sanctuary, this is the stuff of death metal dreams.
It’s impossible not to get yanked into the cloud of machine-gun ferocity and biting chugs; you can’t, and shouldn’t, come up for breath for even a second when 200 Stab Wounds are chopping through their set. The “legends-in-waiting” have but two albums to their name, the second of which, Manual Manic Procedures, threw so much classic gore-themed ferocity onto the metal community’s slab of consciousness that they are etching a place for themselves as one of the great death metal outfits of these contemporary times. Their guitar tones are pure evil, and the risk of death by fuzzed-up reverberation and goblin squeals is temptingly high. From Itty Bitty Pieces to Release the Stench, 200 Stab Wounds have unleashed far too many blistering bangers over a small discography, and the result is an immeasurably fantastic bit of ear-bleeding at a Tuesday night show. The sweaty pits and crowd-surfing conveyor belt reach a level of filth deemed respectable by the chief security guard standing with the band on stage, who catches every limb thrown his way – even if he looks more like a sprinter gearing up to set a new record. After the encore, hoards of fans crowd the merch stand and venue edge where the opportunity to take a photo with one of these menaces comes up, and after a show like that, how could anyone resist?
