Live Review: Aborted/Cryptopsy/Ingested at The Dome Tufnell Park, London (26/11/18)

It’s a night of extreme metal in London as four of the nastiest most vile sounding bands on the planet combine forces for a UK/Ireland tour beginning at The Dome in Tufnell Park.

Unfathomable Ruination, Ingested, Cryptopsy and Aborted bring some of the heaviest riffs, the most brutal breakdowns and the most horrifying vocals to a packed out venue. The Dome might not be officially sold out but it’s damn close.

An early stage time for Unfathomable Ruination means we’re unable to catch their short set but we do make it in time for Ingested who light up the stage with high energy and brutality that gets not only multiple circle pits but a gnarly looking wall of death. Savage doesn’t cut it but it’s all over far too quickly (sets appear to be running late).

It’s a shame that we didn’t get more from Ingested instead of Cryptopsy whose intense technical death metal is a little bit bland sounding tonight. It’s fast, it’s very heavy but it comes and it goes leaving you hungry for something a little more energetic. What they do, they do really well as you would expect from a band 20 years into their career but Ingested pulled their pants down tonight as do Aborted.

There’s a little more room in the venue by time Aborted finally hit the stage (10pm!) suggesting the Cryptopsy fans may have not wanted to hang around but it’s still a raucous crowd that greets the death metal legends.

Missing a member tonight, Aborted are playing as a four-piece but you wouldn’t know it based on the noise they make. This is how death metal should sound, utterly deafening with an intensity that rolls over you like a fog. Frontman Sven De Caluwe is demonic on stage, directing pits and ferocious head-banging like a conductor of a symphony of death.

The breakdowns are some of the most visceral of the night…maybe the whole year. Aborted have already released one of the best death metal records of the year in Terrorvision and now they can add one of the best death metal shows of the year in the UK to their plaudits too.