Reviewed on 19th July 2008.

Asomvel

Live at Fenton on Saturday, 5th May 2001

For one night only, The Fenton was quite possibly the heaviest building on Planet Earth. Last night we had pop-rock masterpieces from Tempting Kate, but tonight in The Fenton we have metal at its heaviest.

Talk about good advertising... Flesh Engine have had fly posters plastered all over my resident Headingley for the last few weeks. Expensive but worth it for the Fenton was nearly packed to see these guys, who aren't even remotely local. Flesh Engine do exactly what they say on the tin, the presence of a frontman with pink dreadlocks says enough. The band grind, thrash and roar their way through a 30 minute set, definitely the best band of the night. The frontman stalks the crowd between growling uncontrollably in a Max Cavalera stylee. Musically, two bands who come to mind when hearing them are Soulfly and Raging Speedhorn, with a slightly more technical edge and with quite a few grindcore overtones in there too... maybe not a full on Medulla Nocte style assault but still heavy as hell. The Fenton was 2/3rds full to see these guys before bogging off, a bit of a shame because the place was disconcertingly quiet for the rest of the night. Absolutely stomach-churning awesome.

At most local gigs, Dillseed could have overpowered pretty much anyone with their nearly sleazy punk/metal thang. Hell this is their 5th gig ever and they're supporting a Kerrang featured band. The original second support band had pulled out so the Asomvel dudes basically grabbed any people off the street who vaguely looked like they were in a band and they got Dillseed. Punk rock like fuck, they even managed to make a Bloodhound Gang song sound punk, bassist Chaz spent the entire gig with his foot on the monitor and in true punk rock fashion Kev the guitar player managed to snap a string and ended up taking two and a half songs to restring. Not good, there was a general un-tightness about them, but as far as their individual instrumental performances go they are a cool band, who definitely don't take themselves too seriously at all. They are pretty listenable compared to the other two bands tonight!

But enough of that new fangled stuff; anyone who's seriously into Motorhead would have loved Asomvel and would have kicked themselves for not coming. Hell, no are you sure this ISN'T Motorhead on stage?!? They even LOOK exactly like Motorhead, sideburns and all. This IS Motorhead through and through, except these guys make Motorhead sound like pussies, the twenty song set opening with 'Motherload' and closing with 'Womb To The Tomb'. I'd like to think that I like my music heavy, but after hearing Asomvel for an hour, an hour of relentless pure rock fury even I was scared. Why are Blink 182 gigs never like this? Also this is quite possibly the loudest gig I've ever been to, unbearably so. My ears were fucked for a full day afterwards. But, only about 20-25 people saw them, which allowed a lot of room in the middle for a decent slampit, before eventually collectively collapsing on the floor to quite possibly form the world's first 'squirmpit'?!?!? It did get VERY VERY VERY VERY tiring to listen to after a bit but Asomvel do totally rock. Nuff said.