Sold on Devil Chimp

A Chimpspanner

I, Melachi ibn Amillar, being of unsound mind and body, did attend the gig of Sylosis, Devil Sold His Soul and Chimpspanner, at the Academy Islington, London, on 24 January 2013. When Chimpspanner started I groaned, as they appeared to be a vocal-less 3 piece playing jazz fusion, but after a while a deep metallism came through, matched by great and well-structured virtuosity, without any pointless guitar solos. But probably half an hour of this was enough, as it is difficult to concentrate on a band without a lead and obvious themes for much longer than that. Nevertheless, excellent supporting material.

He sold his soul

Next Devil Sold His Soul, the singer giving a fine appearance of a chimp, leaping and screaming. Initially again I was not impressed, but gradually began to remark the strange slowness of many of the songs and the frequent almost processional passages, as though he were shouting incantations, against a funereal beat with swirling synthesizers, also with no guitar leads, despite numerous guitarists. Though I have no idea was he was screaming about. Won over, I picked up their CD next day at HMV. But I think the repetitive sections would benefit from more sophisticated modulation. Some of the "clean" vocals were painfully out of tune.

Sylosis and shorthairs

Sylosis played for a bit under an hour and a half, the sound quality was excellent and the vocals were much stronger than I heard previously, and the guitars seemed this time in tune throughout. The material from their new album seemed more aggressive but with less of an epic quality than the rest. Curiously some resembled the folk metal bands, more like a jig, I suppose this follows from playing complex figures quickly. All in all, I, Melachi, found this a most satisfactory evening.