Hierophant Nox | Feature

	Special Feature- Live Report
	Stuka Squadron/The Lamp of Thoth/With One Last Breath 3 April, The Riverside, Selby, UK
	The chance to witness a rampant band of undead fighter pilots raging past your doorstep, guns and amps blazing, doesn’t come around every day. If you think about it, that’s probably a good thing; sacrificial virgins are thin on the ground around here, so it would be hard to find sustenance for five vampire musicians on a long-term basis. The novelty would wear off fairly sharpish too. For one night, however, this is a spectacle not to be missed - London’s Stuka Squadron (the supernatural gentlemen in question) gracing our belovedly ragged local bar, The Riverside, with a pair of Yorkshire bands forming the vanguard for an enjoyable evening of beer and the heaviest of sounds.
	WITH ONE LAST BREATH: York’s own With One Last Breath are so up-to-date they make me feel positively near retirement age, and, as I point out frequently, I am a relatively spring chicken. I would hazard a guess that this is what the youth refer to as ‘melodic metalcore’; crunching, twisting metallic riffage smashes happily into frontman Sam’s rather accomplished melodic, plaintive vocals, which are given a second counterpoint in the form of his bandmates’ best attempts at ‘guttural’. The fret-bending, mind-shredding solo action I understand to be necessary to the genre is very much in evidence, meaning that overall, With One Last Breath completely nail the sound they’re aiming for. To achieve this, they must pack technical ability well beyond the average for their tender years (some of them couldn’t legally buy a beer), and their enjoyment of, and enthusiasm for, the live experience really shone through. Do their fans have interchangeable, vision-inhibiting hair? Yes. Does it all sound the same to me anyway? Yes. But you can’t knock the passion.

	THE LAMP OF THOTH: While the principal Hierophant quest for the evening was to spend some quality time with the Stukas, I had a serious ulterior motive in battling through my flu to make it to the venue – the more I’d been hearing about Lamp of Thoth, the more I HAD to see them live. Assuming the stage without ceremony, the trio from Keighley instantly have everyone’s attention with their monumentally potent grooving, dirty doom. They’re a testament to the sometimes-forgotten power of the simple ‘drums-bass-guitar’ line-up, weaving a rich sound with economical grace. Frontman ‘(The Overtly Melancholy) Lord Strange’ melds aggression and esoteric weirdness capably, aided by a confidently bizarre delivery, which verges towards some strange druidic place at times. The guitar work is absolutely magnificent; warm, fluid and possessed of a really classic, moving doom tone, with flourishes aplenty and at least one solo that transforms wizardly six-stringer ‘Randy Reaper’ into a blurred mass of hair and digits. The uniqueness of The Lamp of Thoth’s concept and musical cocktail is so distinctive that when they launch into a song named for themselves they put a folkish, nostalgic spell on their audience. Add a refrain about a ‘motherfucking whore’ and I don’t spot an intelligent metal fan in the room who’s not won over – there’s something mystical, hedgerow-dwelling and distinctly English about these fellows that is completely irresistible; catch them for yourselves if you can.

	STUKA SQUADRON: Seeing the Stuka Squadron in full fighter pilot get-up isn’t unexpected if you’ve perused the pages (and more recently, covers) of some of metal’s bigger print magazines, but seeing it in the flesh is quite something else – that so much effort should be gone to for an assault on a smallish bar really speaks of the band’s commitment to playing their A-game every time they step onstage. The visual impact stops just short of overwhelming, with black leather, jack-boots, peaked hats and insignia jostling for the audience’s attention. For those unacquainted with the band, the militaristic concept should not be cause for concern; it’s not quite tongue-in-cheek, but it’s not a dedicated historical homage either. Rather, being rabid German fighter pilots gives the Stukas the necessary dramatic backdrop to perform racing, dynamic heavy metal packed with battle-ready heroism. While the costumes gathered onlookers, the music kept them pinned where they were, with the band energetically blasting through their debut EP, "We Drink Blood". The title track seems to be a firm favourite with Stuka fans everywhere, and indeed it does sound great live, seemingly penned with audience participation in mind. For my money, however, "One-Eyed God King" is still their strongest card, and its wallowing, grooving layers of sound and super-catchy refrain made maximum impact on assembled ear-drums. "Lovecraft" also proved even more memorable in a live setting, and witnessed ‘Duke Fang’ James Begley giving it all his not-inconsequential lungs could muster. Performance-wise, the Stukas could not be faulted – every member was dead set on creating a great memory for those who had assembled to see them, and with Graham Pyre throwing heroic poses at one end of the stage, and Zabulon writhing around on the floor abusing his guitar at the other, I’ve rarely seen so many calories burned in the pursuit of true metal. One minor problem was that these two undead weren’t actually as far apart as the previous sentence suggests – cramming the Stukas into the Riverside, given their propensity to throw themselves around and be dramatical, was a little bit cruel, and were there an RSPCA for vampires, I’m sure we’d all be reported. More seriously, while the intimate surroundings cradled and nurtured The Lamp of Thoth’s organic, frugal sound, the density of Stuka Squadron’s structures doesn’t really stand for a small, low-roofed venue, and there were some unfortunate seconds when even my battle-hardened ears could only pick out white noise. Still, that’s not to criticise the band or the backline – I have a hunch that Stuka Squadron will only ever sound pitch-perfect in the stadium they’ve always dreamed of. With riffs and choruses like theirs, surely they’ll end up in it sooner rather than later.