Taya Llewellyn
March 24, 2025| Harry Shiels |LIVE REVIEW
Live Review: Napalm Death, Crowbar, Full Of Hell and Brat | O2 Institute Birmingham | 09/03/2025
Closing out their month-long Campaign For Musical Destruction Tour 2025 with a hometown show, all around legends Napalm Death bring along a stacked support bill for an effectively sold out grand finale.
BRAT
A strong crowd are down early to see the New Orleans “bimboviolence” quartet BRAT’s first show in the home of metal. It’s clear even before they hit the stage, that the band are here to have fun and not take themselves seriously, blaring speech samples from Gladiator over Darude’s ‘Sandstorm’ before a swift bludgeoning of cuts from debut album Social Grace and some pulls from early EP’s. The pits are explosive out of the gate as vocalist Liz Selfish parades around the stage with boundless energy and charisma, her caustic vocals the cherry on top of the performance (doubled when FOH vocalist Dylan Walker joins them onstage for ‘Hesitation Wound’ for manic combo). At regular points the band play bubblegum pop tracks (think Shania Twain, Britney Spears, Cascada etc.) as interludes between their vicious assaults, the crowd loving them as much as BRAT themselves having a laugh and enjoying the odd mix up. It’s a scorching thirty-minute opening set, the band put on a great show and set the mood for the ensuing chaos that is soon to follow as the night progresses.
Photo Credit: Taya Llewellyn
BRAT
Full Of Hell
It’s as you would expect from the experimental noise/grindcore/powerviolence outfit Full Of Hell tonight, cramming fifteen tracks from across their studio albums and EP’s (alongside a cover of Melvins deep cut ‘Oven’) into their thirty-five minute set. Bathed in red light for the entirety of a dazzling and concussive beating, a Full Of Hell set is almost like a test of endurance, even if you’re not throwing your body about in the uncontrollable mobbing that constitutes the most pit. Vocalist/programmer Dylan Walker regularly stokes the flames when he can, notably shouting “Circle pit, wall of death, I don’t give a fuck” before the visceral ‘Pile Of Dead Horses’. The new material from Coagulated Bliss sounds unrelenting in particular, the noise-rock infused tracks standing out from the power violence onslaught. ‘Coagulated Bliss’ gets a frenzied response, the pit exploding as if a bomb went off, and crowd surfers are everywhere. Closing with ‘Burning Apparition’, Full Of Hell in the flesh are a transcendent experience leaving the stage to the soundtrack of abrasive noise and feedback, here’s hoping that their next UK run is sooner rather than later.
Photo Credit: Taya Llewellyn
Crowbar
The night so far has been relentless noise and grindcore, in a way it feels like sludge metal pioneers Crowbar stick out a little bit. The crossover in the crowd is clear however, as the packed out floor surges and roars with excitement as Kirk Windstein and co sound off with Sonic Excess in Its Purest Form classic ‘To Build A Mountain’. They sound monstrous, booming out of the PA and easily the loudest set of the evening, neck shredding sludge grooves and thunderous drums rattling your ribcage. It’s a strong set list as well, half of the ten song set split between their classic self-titled release and Broken Glass, with cherry-picked favourites rounding out the rest.
The crowd is going apeshit, yet when the intimidating gallop of ‘Chemical Godz’ start they become completely unglued; a near constant flood of crowd surfers through the track and the following ‘Negative Pollution’. Shane Embury joins the band for ‘High Rate Extinction’, the breakdown at the end of the track nearly starting a riot, with the pit intensity spilling over. Kirk is adored by the fans and has them in the palm of his hand for the forty-minute masterclass. The energy stays high for the final run of (one of the best riffs in the game) ‘Planets Collide’, ‘Like Broken Glass’ and ‘All I Had (I Gave)’, a sentiment the crowd seem intent on living up to. Crowbar are one of a kind, continuing to impress and imprint their necessary legacy into the minds of fans new and old.
Photo Credit: Taya Llewellyn
Napalm Death
Forty plus years on the trot and pioneering grindcore royalty Napalm Death have nothing left to prove. Legends in every which way possible, still sticking to their principles and ethics the same today as when they initially formed. Birmingham has always acted as a ‘hometown’ show for the West Midlands born band, and tonight feels celebratory after closing a month-long country hopping stint across mainland Europe and the UK. They’re as straightforward as you get, walking onto the stage with no spectacle and getting right into it with deep, deep cut ‘Multinational Corporations, Part II’, a more subtle industrial affair. After this though, all bets are off as soon as they break into ‘Silence is Deafening’ and the pits start to swell, and the levy finally breaks, pure insanity instigated by ‘Lowpoint’ and lasts the full hour and ten minutes.
As expected, the band are on stellar form after being on the road for the last month. Bassist Shane Embury is still a master of the oppressive grooves and punishing bass work, the low-end rumbling skulls and complimenting the violent precision of Danny Herrera’s uncompromising drumming. The band is still performing as a four piece live, John Cooke sounding vicious tonight, his guitar work cutting through the mix like a knife through butter. Barney Greenway is still running around the stage like a mad man in a Hunt Saboteurs Association t-shirt, his passion for the band’s overt political stances still shining clear as day.
The twenty-four track set list is a wide eclectic grab bag from across their various releases, with most recent album Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatisms alongside From Enslavement to Obliteration and Scum featuring frequently. There are still heaps of deep cuts for the lifers; the likes of ‘Vision Quest’, ‘Twist the Knife (Slowly)’, ‘Narcoleptic’ and ‘The World Keeps Turning’ alongside fan favourites like ‘Suffer The Children’ and ‘Unchallenged Hate’. Most important though, as Barney himself notes towards the end of the night: “the keen eyed among you who came to our shows last year will notice the set list is almost entirely different, so you know we’re not lazy bastards”. The final run sees a bevy of standouts, with a Scum trifecta coming back to back; title track, ‘Prison Without Walls’ and the always entertaining ‘You Suffer’ leading into one of the night’s highlights as the band emphatically performs their cover of ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ to an ecstatic response. Finally crowning their masterclass performance with the classic ‘Unchallenged Hate’, it’s another unbelievable show from one of the best bands to ever do it. What else is there to say? If you somehow haven’t seen Napalm Death by this point, what the fuck are you doing?
Photo Credit: Taya Llewellyn
