Rock Music News: Ice Nine Kills / Skynd / Lansdown / Defying Decay @ Kentish Town Forum, London. (2024)

A child in a yellow raincoat, holding a red balloon on a string, waves enthusiastically to the crowd as circus music swells. Behind the child creeps a sharply dressed man in a wild clown wig . They dance around, seemingly unaware of the smoke machine billows surrounding them. Let alone the drum solos with sarcastic horn effects leading into thrashing guitars and vocals which swim effortlessly between harsh menace and melodic desperation. That’s the two sides of Ice Nine Kills: an intensely cinematic spectacle with actors, props and recreations from all our favourite slasher flicks as well as an impressive metal band at the height of their powers. It’s a lurid and gory tribute to the silver screen and the magic of imagination, with a lot of guitar. 

In a way, the support bands also present both sides of Ice Nine Kills. Defying Decay, probably the only seven piece band from Bangkok in the scene, create casually melodic tunes drifting over a perpetually churning sea of thrashing noise. It’s an hour’s set from any other band crammed into 20 mins, like an overstuffed suitcase.

Lansdown are masculine without being overpowering, driven by heartfelt and muscular bass. They display the genuine glow of a band enjoying what they do, mining a rich vein of grunge and classic rock excavated by a laser guitar. While the first two acts represent the purely musical side of Ice Nine Kills, Skynd go all out on supporting the theatrical and murderous aspects of the night. Imagine a movie with a scene set in hell’s own nightclub, with an undead opera singer wailing about the crimes of the damned hooded figures behind her, and you’re halfway to imagining a Skynd live set. ‘Jim Jones’ especially is the vocal-effects-laden incarnation of your nightmares and they channel the macabre into dance metal horrifically well. 

Of course, their dramatic tendencies pale like a corpse in comparison to the sheer spectacle of Ice Nine Kills. From the opening growl of ‘Funeral Derangements’, a beat as fast as the strobe lights pummels the audience into devotion. It’s a triumphant haunted house of a performance and the instant jump-scare fists in the air chorus of ‘don’t give up, don’t let go’ is intoxicating. The Rammstein-lite ‘Wurst Vacation’, complete with actors wielding chainsaws and enacting cannibal murder scenes to the sound of squealing guitars, is a horror triumph. But at no point is their skill lost to the spectacle: ‘Hip To Be Scared’ might involve Bateman raincoats and seamless disco transitions, but there’s always space for guitarist Dan Sugarman to let his fingers do the talking. When he jumps to the middle of the stage, the movie mirage breaks and you appreciate for a second that Ice Nine Kills are one hell of a rock band. 

Ice Nine Kills is a tremendously self-aware band: aware of their performance, the drama they want to create and the effect each little tweak will have on the mesmerised crowd. ‘American Nightmare’ may be unsubtle in its presentation, but their take on the horror and metal genres is not. It’s clear how rehearsed their visual and energetic show really is, packed with old school rock club energy. The slower vocal build ups on ‘Communion Of The Cursed’ – their tribute to ‘The Exorcist’ – are masterful, and they play with pace and effects to keep the tension high, directing attention to the actors onstage at appropriately dramatic points. 

‘Assault and Batteries’, their take on the ‘evil doll’ trope, features choreography, costumes, and masks, but their sound is colossal, burying you six feet under a pile of distortion. They’re the evil twins of Panic At The Disco, come from a mirror universe to give you nightmares. But then, a few minutes later, there’s a moment of emotional honesty to ‘save yourself or save your soul’ in the dying pleas of ‘A Grave Mistake’, adding instant of gravity to an otherwise unreal performance. For those few minutes, they’re just guys in a rock band, doing their thing. For the curtain to drop, even for a second, just makes the CGI ultra violence that more wickedly enjoyable. 

Finishing on ‘Welcome To Horrorwood’ is the big reveal; the open doors to the outside world at the end of the ghost train, as if to reveal and reassure that it was just pretend all along. The softness of the whispered parts are transformed into a celebratory yell that we’ve all survived and, more than that, we’ve had fun at most original and exciting murder show out there, giving ourselves over to the chills and thrills of a band at the absolute top of their game. 

Kate Allvey