Reality Unfolds 2024: The Review – Saturday

As the time approaches 6pm the pounding of hardcore has abandoned the New Cross Inn for a brief moment and been replaced with dread-including sludge as Swamp Coffin take to the stage for their debut London show. While the trio deliver grotesquely heavy distortion and bass that vibrates throughout your body, the riled up crowd look perplexed that every song is the same speed as a breakdown, and (justly) outraged at the rowing in the middle of their set. By ramping up the speed by a huge 1 bpm in sections, bodies start to collide into each other during the slowest wall of death emulating an interpretative dance practice rather than an extreme metal festival.

Realm of Torment resume normal service slamming Reality Unfolds straight back into mosh, turning the New Cross Inn into spinkick central and delivering a superb performance. No less than you’d expect from Southampton’s finest. UKHC is further bolstered from metallic hardcore outfit, Cruelty. With the semi-circle of carnage taking up plenty of room, the New Cross Inn is brimming with eager fans as the 6th hardcore band of the day slam into uncompromised heaviness with riffs that reverberate through your bones and force you to punch your fist in the air.

Following a day of pure ignorance, more karate than a martial arts movie and sludge, sub-headliners Celestial Sanctuary indicate a shift away from beloved hardcore into ferocious death metal for the final two acts. An endless barrage of guttural growls, slaughtering riffs and pounding blast beats from the moment they grace the stage, Celestial Sanctuary are a fine example of how impeccable UK death metal is right now. ‘Relentless Savagery’ executes what it set out to do, colliding bodies together in the pit surrounded by fists thrusting into the air, violent head banging and stink faces. An unparalleled choice of sub-headliner turning Reality Unfolds into Brutality Unfolds. 

As night falls, the New Cross Inn is tense with anticipation, eagerly awaiting the debut UK show from Boston’s monstrous Fuming Mouth. There isn’t much of a gap between walking on stage and being hurled into their explicitly murderous sound, perfectly emulsifying death metal and hardcore, and generating indiscriminate carnage from the pit. The anarchy around the room amplifies following tracks from their flawless sophomore album, Last Day of Sun, starting with the absolutely feral ‘I’ll Find You First’ leading into ‘Kill the Disease’ which produced the stellar highlight of the crowd aggressively echoing Mark Whelan’s repetition of “fight back, kill the disease”. The exhilaration around the room is high as ‘Out of Time’ rips into the unforgiving solo before the band serve a blow to the chest with the emotively raw ‘Silence Beyond Life’. Drawing the set to a close, the concluding verses of ‘Road to Odessa’ summarise the thoughts of many in the crowd who are ready to crash after this tremendous debut performance that will leave you yearning for more.