There is something deeply vindicating about seeing a package tour like this one fill up the Zénith in its smaller configuration. Extreme metal is no longer confined to basements and back rooms. It has stepped into the mainstream and is swinging with intent. Lorna Shore’s rapid ascent is the clearest illustration of that shift. Armed with massive production and a catalogue built for maximum impact, they laid waste to a packed hall of fans primed for combat. Circle pits opened in waves, walls of death split the floor, and a constant stream of bodies surfed overhead through a churning sea of tattoos, sweat, hair and beer.
On stage, the quintet matched that chaos with astonishing precision. Their sense of dynamics sets them apart from many of their peers. The fast sections fired like automatic weapons, blast beats so inhuman they could make an average black metal drummer consider early retirement. The slower, more atmospheric passages unfolded with near symphonic grandeur, steeped in a strange, elegiac beauty. Then came the breakdowns, grotesquely heavy and tuned to subterranean depths, moments where the entire crowd seemed to drop into a collective crouch, moving like a single organism. With towering video projections, fire bursts and thick clouds of smoke, it was a fully realized spectacle. A definitive metal show for the second quarter of the century.
