Chelsea Grin, support from Death of a Salesman and By Conquest or Consent, Wednesday 17th June – Bar Sub, QSU, Belfast
The tiny Bar Sub buried deep in the bowels of Queen’s Student Union was the place to be on June 17th if you were young, had ear tunnels and liked to spend an evening crashing into other black-clad teens. Salt Lake City natives and deathcore heroes Chelsea Grin finally hit Belfast on their Ashes to Ashes tour, and despite it being a school night their gig was well populated with excitable 14 pluses (as well as a few older faces, too).
Up first was By Conquest Or Consent, who played their heavy brand of groove/tech metal to what was undoubtedly the youngest crowd they’ve ever faced. Their enthusiasm was contagious, with the rapidly filling room responding with loud cheers and even a small mosh pit.
Tracks such as ‘The Last Emperor’ and the bruising ‘We Came to Bring the Fight’ attracted an ever-increasing crowd of curious onlookers attracted by their heavy groove and vocalist Pete’s throaty roar. It’s heartening to see, as exposure to local support acts widens the palettes of these kids to a) possibly different genres than the headliners, and b) local acts they may never have heard of, simply because they’re too young to get into most of their gigs. Kudos to tonight’s organisers there.
Gratifyingly, the second support were also a local band, in the form of metal headcases Death of a Salesman. Right from the off they give it some serious welly; there’s no going easy or patronising the young crowd as vocalist Aidan Thompson demands circle pits and even a wall of death. Their frantically paced brand of scruffy death-ish metal goes down an absolute storm as a result, as does Thompson’s no-holds-barred passion.
The band finish their swirling, delightfully unhinged set with their “love song” ‘Another Day’. Needless to say, to quote JBJ “this ain’t a love song”; with lyrics as full of rage and disdain as the music is, it twists and turns before ending rather abruptly. The band then play out an instrumental outro that channels Pantera’s ‘Domination’ while Thompson disappears (probably to have a well-deserved lie down).
By now the venue was packed and the smell of Lynx and hormonal sweat hung heavily in the air. Such is the crowd’s excitement that they’re even singing along to the between-set tunes (despite being those ‘sung by unknown artists so we don’t have to pay a licence fee’ covers). Anticipation builds, a chant of ‘CHELSEA! CHELSEA!’ arises from the now squishily-full room…then, without ANY ado whatsoever, the deathcore heroes are onstage and firing on all cylinders, sending the room spinning into immediate ecstatic chaos.
Their sound is fairly typical deathcore: harsh, shrieked vocals interspersed with a pretty impressive death metal growl on the part of vocalist Alex Koehler, blastbeats aplenty, and breakdowns by the bucketload. Koehler holds the audience in the palm of his hand throughout, with his oft-repeated command to “jump, jump, jump” slavishly followed, as with the obligatory circle pits and walls of death. And if he’s a teensy bit posey, this adoring crowd don’t notice (just the older reviewers hehe).
The band earn big brownie points for their declaration that, although this is their first time in Belfast, “it most definitely won’t be [their] last”, resulting in deafening screams from the audience. They wrap up their surprisingly short set (a mere forty-five minutes; that said it’s most likely tailored to the young age of the crowd) with a pulverising version of ‘Recreant’, finishing up a night that has seen them cement their reputation as a big name in the deathcore genre.
To sum up: largely teenage crowd, solid if slightly generic headliner, a set that occasionally veered from ‘well-rehearsed’ to ‘slick and unspontaneous’ but was enjoyable nonetheless. Despite their gruesome moniker, Chelsea Grin are about as scary as mittens on kittens, but they certainly know how to put on an entertaining show, as well as introduce kids to music that hopefully encourages them to seek out other bands within the broad genre of metal, which is far better than them being stuck with the likes of 1D and that Bieber creature. As comedian Billy Connolly’s body artist pronounced after piercing his nipple: “that’s one more of us, and one less of them”. Amen!
