Live Review: Counterparts w/God Complex, One Step Closer and Sunami at The Engine Rooms in Southampton!

As anyone who enjoyed a trip to Newark Showgrounds for Tech-Fest over the past decade will tell you, there is something wonderfully nostalgic about the corrugated metal and exposed pipework ceiling of The Engine Rooms in Southampton. On a cold, damp winters evening in February there isn’t a better venue to witness the first of the United Kingdom shows at the end of a European tour that has already seen Counterparts, Sunami, One Step Closer and God Complex turn stages to sawdust from Prague to Paris. By this point the bands should be operating like well oiled machines and on a Friday night that means one thing. Mosh pits!

The rise, fall and rise again of Liverpool quintet God Complex [9/10] has been a truth stranger than fiction, from their earlier Gloom Metal days of 2018’s “Created Sick” and performances at Upsurge Festival at London’s New Cross Inn to their surfacing with a more organic sound and a new line up under the orchestration of vocalist Harry Rule and signing to SharpTone Records for 2025 EP “He Watches In Silence“, you couldn’t make it up. After a European tour last year the band are opening tonight and pull no punches with their blend of Death Metal and Hardcore, commanding circle pits and two stepping while laying down some seriously sludgy riffs. The distorted tones are brutally heavy and what the guitars lack in complexity the drumming has in intricacy. Rumbling bass and savage vocals are the order of the night with Rule giving us a few feral death growls during “Ba’al’s Trick” and the violent turbulence of “The Judge” that borders on Grindcore which might suggest a heavier direction in the future. It actually feels daft saying it but somehow live they manage to squeeze more energy out of their material and that makes their live set burn like wire.

The Melodic Metalcore with emotive screamed vocals of One Step Closer [7/10] is an entirely different vibe to pretty much every band on this varied line up and while variety is indeed the spice of life, here, tonight, they stand out like a hammer smashed thumb and they know it. Vocalist Ryan Savitski is almost apologetic as he tries to encourage the crowd to have some fun during cuts like “Blur My Memory“, “Your Hazel Tree” and “I Feel So“, the stark contrast between the almost clean guitars and harsh vocals giving off Dance Gavin Dance vibes. You have to admire their persistence and efforts but by the end it feels like they’ve been playing to the wrong crowd and there is nothing that can change that, even if the compositions are solid.

Bringing back the energy with an incendiary performance the Crossover Beatdown Hardcore of San Jose, Californians Sunami [9/10] is fully embraced by the south coast crowd as the band absolutely crush tonight. The only surprise in their set is the absence of arguably their finest moment and biggest track “Weak Die First“, the band instead opting for a career spanning set of short, sharp shocks that includes “Sweet Relief“, “Mind Your Business” and “Contempt of Cop“. As a band they may have begun as a short-lived joke but seven years down the road they’re a group on the rise with the distinctive vocals of Josef Alfonso over the weighty riffs of Mike “Durt” Durrett and powerful rhythms of bassist Theo Dominguez and drummer Benny Eissmann. Put simply they’re here to dominate and tonight they bring the old school Hardcore and turn the venue to a war zone of crowd surfers, two steppers and mosh pit lovers in a demonstration of prowess. Sure there isn’t all that much that could be considered unique to their sound but what they do they do incredibly well as they give themselves no place to hide and the combination of the hard hitting attitude and incitement of mosh pit violence is exactly the kind of fun everyone wants in their lives.

There is something about the harsh vocals and lyrical narratives of Brenden Murphy that mean the songs of Canadians Counterparts [10/10] are ones you feel. Like deep down in your guts. They have the grit and integrity of life lived and real pain felt, the intensely personal themes running through them resonating with everyone who dares to listen. Live the band are a ball of cathartic energy, Murphy expressing himself over the spine juddering riffs, rhythmic pummelling and occasional melancholic lead. The band have evolved over the past twenty years with a myriad of line up changes and are now arguably at their heaviest. The stage has four stained glass windows with electric candles placed in front of them to create a church of noise vibe and as the band take to the stage, those windows are illuminated by coloured lights. We get treated to no less than four cuts from 2024’s surprise released EP “Heaven Let Them Die” during a career spanning set and after twenty years the surprise is not what’s in but what’s left out of the set list. “A Martyr Left Alive” is a potent opening cut, “Bound to the Burn” seeing the first of a long line of crowd surfers testing security. Tonight’s rendition of “Wings of Nightmares” is absolutely crushing and while the band play more Metallic Hardcore than anything else, they still offer up a moment or two of Hardcore Punk and Melodic Hardcore from their past, going back to 2015 album “Tragedy Will Find Us” for “Choke” and “Stranger“. Unlike other vocalists Murphy doesn’t call for circle pits or two steppers, he calls for voices to scream his words along with him. He’s wearing a God Complex t-shirt tonight so it’s no surprise when Harry Rule joins him on stage to split blood and venom for a verse and chorus. Back in 2018 both bands played Upsurge Festival at the New Cross Inn in London, an event that lives long in the memory due to the sheer volume of fans trying to grab the microphone from Murphy during Counterparts set. Kyle Brownlee’s drum sound is immense with Tyler Williams and Jesse Doreen both playing guitars and leaving bass on the backing track. The chants of one more song are rousing because after an hour we’re simply not ready for tonight’s captivating performance to come to an end but as the house lights haven’t come on we know the four piece are coming back to the stage. When they do we don’t get one more song but two, a blistering scream-a-long rendition of “Love Me” followed by the left hook of “Whispers of Your Death“. Long live the Canadian Kings. Long live Counterparts.