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Review: Gloryhammer/Brothers of Metal/Arion, SWX
It’s easy to be sceptical when nightclubs set out to boost revenue by staging live music. Lest we forget, the O2 Academy was built on the site of a former cinema as one of those new-fangled ‘superclubs’ that sprang up at the tail end of the rave era, which perhaps explains why so many complain about the poor view when the place is packed. SWX has a much older pedigree. Back in the sixties and early seventies, it was the Top Rank and played host to everyone from The Kinks to Peter Frampton, the Beach Boys and many of the major prog acts (Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Gentle Giant). Decades as a nightclub ensued, under various names (Romeo and Juliets, The Syndicate, Odyssey, The Works, etc) until it became SWX. To their credit, they installed a decent PA system and built up an excellent reputation as a great place to enjoy live music, with plenty of metal in the eclectic programme. Then came that arson attack while the building was being renovated. Finally, after 903 days of unlikely silence, SWX welcomed punters back with this power metal triple bill.
There’s a distinct odour of fresh paint and the improvements are subtle rather than overwhelming. Best of all, sightlines have been improved, especially at the sides of the stage.
is needed now More than ever
Big cheeses back home in Finland, Arion are doomed to play to a couple of hundred punters at 6:30pm as the opening act on this tour. They’re absent a keyboard player, but thanks to the miracle of modern technology this proves no impediment to their brand of punchy modern symphonic power metal as we can still hear the keyboards through the speakers.
Much of their necessarily short set is drawn from the 2018 Life Is Not Beautiful album, with the catchy Unforgivable being the highlight. Lassi Vääränen even manages to get a singalong going during set closer At the Break of Dawn (a duet with a pre-recorded Elize Ryd), but only by instructing us on exactly what to sing. Wonder if he knows that Ms. Ryd’s band Amaranthe played this very venue with Powerwolf back in 2019.
For a lot of people here, costumed and warpainted Swedish octet Brothers of Metal are clearly the main attraction. Playing their first UK tour, these self-styled ‘warriors of true metal’ boast three vocalists (two male, one female) and, in Iron Maiden style, three guitarists. Remarkably, they don’t manage to crash into one another, though that’s probably because they’ve played together for so long.
Portly Mats Nilsson assumes the role of MC/narrator, addressing us as peasants while he fills in the gaps in our knowledge of Norse mythology, his ample warrior’s belly-plate depicting Fenrir swallowing the sun. Barefoot ‘Voice of the Valkyries’ Ylva Eriksson is a strong enough singer for any of the great symphonic metal bands, but she seems more than content with the cause of Viking true metal.
A suitably thunderous The Death of the God of Light opens their performance, but it’s the storming Yggdrasil that gets the strongest audience response. A well-deserved three-song encore begins with The Other Son of Odin, while The Mead Song is delivered amid much hearty quaffing, with Nilsson eventually delivering his lines from a recumbent position, and sounds rather like a power metal version of one of Korpiklaani’s many drinking songs. Finally, Fire, Blood and Steel has us all chanting along as though eager for Valhalla. Let’s hope they come back to headline soon.
If Gloryhammer are perturbed by all the hate swirling around in the swamps of social media, they show no sign of it in tonight’s performance of part-Scottish goblin-slaying melodic panto power metal. The show is pretty much the same as it was last time they headlined SWX back in 2019. Once again, it opens with a roadie bringing on a large cardboard cut-out of Tom Jones, while we all bellow along to Delilah.
Crowd favourites The Siege of Dunkeld (In Hoots We Trust) and Gloryhammer are dispatched in short order, with new pretend Scotsman, Cyprus-born Sozos Michael, proving a very able replacement for his Swiss predecessor as Angus McFife. He also boasts a more conventional power metal falsetto and pummels a stage invading goblin with his, y’know, gloryhammer, as though born to the role.
It helps to embrace the silliness and be at least partly familiar with the band’s self-generated mythology of unicorns, goblins, evil galactic chaos wizards and a fantasy Kingdom of Fife, but there are few newcomers present tonight as inflatable unicorns are raised aloft for The Land of Unicorns and newie Fly Away, the latter sticking to the usual formula of chugging guitar, melodic keyboard embellishment and a huge chant-along chorus.
Goblin King of the Darkstorm Galaxy is quite a mouthful for the newest recruit, who offers a valuable lesson in the versatility of hammers as he introduces Legend of the Astral Hammer. Hootsforce, meanwhile, still sounds as though it could have been by associated act Alestorm had it been about pirates rather than vanquishing Lord Zargothrax.
Michael introduces Angus McFife as being “about the greatest warrior in the galaxy – me!” and the show concludes, as before, with The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee, after which Quo’s Rocking All Over the World tells us that it’s all over and time to shuffle out, making room for the clubbers who are forming an orderly queue outside and possibly wondering what the fuck that was all about.
All pix by Mike Evans
Read more: Metal & Prog picks: September 2022
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