Cirith Ungol, Night Demon and Heavy Sentence at The Underworld in London: September 16, 2024.
Before the current tour kicked off, Cirith Ungol had announced the band’s intention to retire from live performances at the end of their 2024 tour. This means that this gig will be the last ever performance of the band in England. I knew that Cirith Ungol have been active intermittently since the late 1970s but I wasn’t too sure to what extent the English crowd would embrace these North Americans. So I was pleasantly surprised that sweaty and ravenous metal hordes of all ages thronged London’s Underworld in eager anticipation.
Heavy Sentence
Kicking off the evening were Heavy Sentence, from Manchester, England, and although the band hasn’t been around for so long, they performed with supreme confidence and tightness. The music of this quintet sounds like a harsher version of Iron Maiden (in fact if you can imagine Cronos singing with Maiden, you’d have a pretty accurate idea of Heavy Sentence’s sound).
In all honesty I wasn’t familiar with the band’s repertoire but I’m assuming the setlist was focused on the only album under their belt – Bang To Rights from 2021. Band vocalist Gareth ‘Gaz’ Howells also mentioned that they performed a brand new song called “Hallucination,” which I liked, and this could fuel speculation of an impending new release. Incidentally the voice of Gaz was solid and during the last song he stage-dived into the audience and sang that song from the moshpit under the stage. The band’s showmanship was truly infectious as the crowd responded with frenzied delight.
Night Demon
Next on were Night Demon, a traditional heavy metal trio from California, who delivered an expansive setlist with highlights from their repertoire. For some reason I struggled to hear the vocals of Jarvis Leatherby, despite moving about the venue. Night Demon made the most of available resources to create a dynamic and immersive performance. For example, they coordinated the lights with specific songs…something the other two bands didn’t do that much….and had a clear plan of action on how to go on stage for each song besides how to transition from one song to another. The outcome of all this was a performance that really brought their show alive
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Night Demon closed their set with the song whose title bears their name and which raised the level of crowd violence to scary levels. Once more the band proved to be reliable in delivering metal in its most primeval form.
Cirith Ungol
Cirith Ungol played as a quartet, including the band’s original vocalist and drummer plus Jarvis Leatherby on bass and Armand John Anthony on guitar, these last two having just performed with Night Demon. Night Demon’s drummer seemed to be working as a drum tech to Cirith Ungol’s Robert Garven, making Night Demon a ubiquitous presence within the Cirith Ungol camp.
But onto the actual gig. The metal veterans delivered an epic set with a perfect selection of songs, including “Frost & Fire,” “Atom Smasher” and “King Of The Dead.” The unique singing style of Tim Baker gave the songs an epic feel and indeed the band itself has quite an atypical sound, a blend of doom and classic U.S. metal. The crowd devoured every moment of Cirith Ungol’s set, moshing, crowd surfing and chanting the choruses of songs such as “I’m Alive and “Paradise Lost.” It really was a great and enjoyable performance and the best England swan song one could have hoped for.
