Live Review: Spoiler w/InRetrospect & Viatorem at The Black Heart, London!

Arriving in Camden for the Spoiler, InRetrospect and Viatorem gig tonight at The Black Heart and it very much feels like coming home after a long time away. It’s the first Camden show for us in the better part of two years and after Metal Heads around the World (including this writer) put their hands in their pockets and saved the venue from extinction with a huge crowd funding campaign, it feels great to finally be back. If you’ve never been to Camden then let’s say this is the kind of venue we consider to be one of the first rungs on the ladder of the big smoke and something of a rite of passage. The only way is up from here for bands like Weaponry, My Latest Failure and Akkadian with the doors of The Boston Music Rooms, The Underworld, The Dome and then finally Camden Electric Ballroom open and waiting for them when they reach critical mass. Before anyone says that it’s not possible, we saw Architects original line up in their early days at a similar sized venue in Brighton and look at them now! First gig of 2022 after the cancellations and rescheduled stops took away. Tonight is going to be heavy.

Viatorem [8/10] Get things going from the very start with none other than Bound In Fear frontman Ben Mason spin kicking in the bit during their first song. The band announce an upcoming EP with “Post Mortal” that has some incredible Jazz inspired guitar solo moments as they broaden their horizons beyond their hybrid blend of Hardcore, Progressive, Metalcore and insert another genre tag here  with a plentiful supply of riffs and aggression during a set that sees 22 strings between their twin axe attack and bass get hammered. The set is impressive even without the icing on the cake that is their cover of “Bulls On Parade” Rage Against The Machine which is a screamed along to with pride, original cuts like “Exhalt” winning the day. Vocalist Ross Connell has impressive range with moments that touch the void to Slam while going the opposite way with rap screams and barks that bring the house down.

Underneath layers of elements of other sub-genres that they use to add nuance to their sound InRetrospect [8/10] bring their own brand of Progressive Metalcore to the table with their frontman himself showing off an impressive range of clean and unclean vocals as they represent Leeds to the fullest. Two members of the band are wearing stab vests might be a metaphor but tonight they aren’t going to need them as the human shield of fans will carry them home. Be it headbanging, mobile phone torches or hands in the air, they have the audience at their command throughout the set that includes killer new single “Substrate” and “Choke” really showcasing what the band are about. They have the momentum, they just need to capitalise on it.

As a band Spoiler [9/10] have been on a strange ride with tonight being their forth ever live show despite four huge singles during the lockdown hell that has been the past two years. They take to the stage as a quartet with guitarist turned vocalist Will Catternatch at the microphone as he has been for the bands past two singles, their third vocalist in all despite being such a relatively new band. From the surprise of some dark almost gangster rap during a programming backed introduction piece to some seriously heavy new material, it’s clear that Spoiler have evolved into a much more sonically diverse proposition than their singles currently show. Seamlessly blending Deathcore, DJent and Nu-Metalcore in the constructs of the new material while wearing Cannibal Corpse and Vildhjarta t-shirts gives away part of their influence and tonight they are unstoppable. “Repress“, “Brighter” and “The Nihilist” are very much just the tip of the iceberg. To put it bluntly, there hasn’t been a band we’ve witnessed who have impressed us this much with a full set after enticing us with a hand full of songs since Vexed. The material that their play that we haven’t previously heard is just as good if not better than the material that is out there for your listening pleasure and their future is so bright it will burn. The only thing that is missing tonight is more material because the crowd chant “one more song” and are greeted with broad grins and the response “we have none“.