Castle Rat, Necrot and High on Fire at Electric Ballroom, London 2025

Sometimes you just gotta look the pit in the eye and say “not today, Satan”. This one night, the lineup promised violence expelled and I chose instead violence upon my eardrums in the safety of the amplifiers.

Castle Rat

Back after a tantalising performance in the Underworld at DesertFest London, the Rat Queen and her supporters in all things magical continue their adventures above and below ground. In this new chapter, marking the release of their second album, The Bestiary, our heroes are tasked to protect the eponymous volume from the threat of the ever-evil Rat Reaperess. While the theatricality of the act is sure to divide casual listeners (as all things fun are wont to do when we take ourselves too seriously), be reassured that musically, there is nothing gimmicky about it. The Queen’s witchy vocals, equal parts sultry and commanding, are grounded by the focused drumming of the All-Seeing Druid (a beast and a half, pulling polyrhythms out of nowhere and pulling in your attention with his glowing eyes).

To the virtuoso riffs of the Count, the Queen and The Reaperess crash in epic battle (one most excellently choreographed, with movements and set pieces drawn from video games and anime). Stabbings and backstabbings abound as the rest of the adventuring party narrate the drama musically. In the end, the Plague Doctor saves the day and the Queen herself, before returning to his bass and closing off the show in one mighty distorted swoop.

Necrot

Onslaught. The word I’m looking for is onslaught. From the vocals to the relentless double pedal bass drum, Necrot embody what being trapped under a jackhammer feels like. And oooh how the pit loved it. There is a time and place for this level of heavy metal, that feels more personally aggressive and designed to hurt you, and I imagine it comes after a bad day at work or when you need to unblock some old emotions. The vibrations alone would jiggle it out of you.

Engaging with the public while at the same time sonically crushing them, vocalist and bassist Luca Indrio brought back the headbanging frontman aesthetic in between growls and shouts. As “Drill the Skull”, off their latest album Lifeless Birth, suggests, this is not music that goes gently into this dark night, but rather makes it darker.

High On Fire

Did you need a break? No? Perfect, you’re not getting any. High on Fire are business from the word go. There’s really no use trying to use words to describe them, all I can offer you are metaphors: stampeding horses, tumbling avalanches, the maelstrom in the climax of Pirates of the Caribbean 3, that sort of thing. While they walked on stage to their Anatolian-inspired “Karanlık Yol”, that was about as melody-focused as they were gonna get.

The Oakland-based band have no reason to give quarter. Formed in 1998, they’ve been staples of the heavy metal scene ever since, with 9 studio albums, the latest Cometh the Storm released last year, and have grown a sound and a live show that would open a moshpit in the most flowery of meadows. London isn’t exactly a daisy field, so nobody held back, with moshers crashing and circling from the first drum kick. Matt Pike makes for an impressive force of nature vocally, but on the guitar, he shreds with the same ease he might fling a beer can. It’s no easy feat to keep up with their self-imposed tempos and it’s almost like watching three horse jockeys goad each other on to faster and faster speeds.

What unites this lineup is a focus on suffering (in both the heroic and the senseless), violence (both inflicted and undertook) and biblical, cataclysmic language. A song like “Baghdad”, speaking of real historical destruction (both recent and otherwise), uses the language of the epic poem to immortalise and aggrandise. Their perhaps most known song “Rumours of War” seems to pick up the thread where “War Pigs” by Black Sabbath left it: “A clashing comes, the haunting presence controlling all that breathes / It’s brought the world down to its knees“. It’s not music to reflect to. It’s music to blast from the barricades when the revolution starts.