The beginning of 2008 saw the Kerrang tour doing the rounds of UK gig venues with four of the hottest bands of the moment, in the eyes of the rock weekly plying there wares for sold out crowds. Now, a few months later, the bastion of heavy music, Metal Hammer, follow suit and have unleashed four bands which in it’s eyes were advocators of the heavy genre. 

Opening tonight’s bill, a mere ten minutes after the doors opened, in front of about a quarter of the potential audience for tonight, were Canadian metallers 3 Inches Of Blood. Opening their set with the powerful “Night Marauders” from recent album “Fire Up The Blades”. From the off the band were in full swing, a refined riffing machine, with Cam Pipes’ providing some spectacularly high vocals. Something however was missing, screamer Jamie Hooper forced to sit out of the band for the year, however guitarist Justin Hagberg proved to be an apt replacement. Their all to brief set was made up with mainly recent material, including new single “Trial Of Champions” before they rounded off the set with the classic “Deadly Sinners” and the mainstream hit, “Goatrider’s Horde”.

Next up were Devildriver with a set which saw Dez Fafara and co providing thirty minutes of pummeling thrash and death metal. Intensely heavy opener “Not All Who Wander Are Lost”, from new album “The Last Kind Words” set the scene and saw the crowd go berserk, and things just got even crazier from that point on. Throwing in songs predominantly from the new album, like “Horn Of Betrayal” and “Clouds Over California” but also including older material in the shape of “I Dreamed I Died” and the killer “I Could Care Less” Devildriver were on fire. The brutality finally ended with a bang of bodies and set closer “End Of The Line”, the crowd forming a huge circle pit from the barrier at the front to the sound desk, and for those frantic few minutes chaos ensued.

With Defenders Of The Faith having originally been billed with Opeth headlining it was expected that the next band to hit the stage would be Arch Enemy however, in a change to that billing, Opeth, the Swedish Death-Prog-Doom machine,  took to the stage instead. Now I had heard fantastic things about them on this tour, how they have stolen the show each night but as they opened with "Demon of the Fall" I must have missed something. Opeth really seemed, in my opinion, to kill the atmosphere with their epic prog tracks laden with death metal vocals and technical guitar work. I’m not saying the band were bad, they just seemed incredibly out of place on the bill as a whole. Plodding on through their set "Serenity Painted Death", "The Baying of the Hounds" as well as "Heir Apparent" from their upcoming album “Watershed”, all made appearance and the latter especially didn’t sound half bad actually. Finally rounding off their set with "The Drapery Falls", Opeth proved slightly  disappointing, on their own tour in November however they may actually excel.

The last of the four band's to grace the Manchester stage were the Swedish wrecking ball that is Arch Enemy. After seeing them last year on the Black Crusade tour, where they were given far too short a slot in my opinion, I was really looking forward to seeing the band again, but this set really exceeded all expectations. Opening with “Blood On Your Hands”, from the brilliant “Rise Of The Tyrant”, the amount of energy put that the band put into that opening song was kept up until the final salvo of the set.

Gunning through a brilliant set list, that encompassed in the main their last four albums “Ravenous”, “Taking Back My Soul”, “Dead Eyes See No Future” and “My Apocalypse” all made appearances, the last of which saw front woman Angela Gossow showing her command of the crowd in this more intimate setting, as well as the Amott brothers showcasing their dual action shredding. Drummer Daniel Erdlandsson even gave Manchester a blitzkrieg of a drum solo in between “Revolution Begins” and “Dead Bury Their Dead”. Of course rounding up the line up, and holding the rhythm together was bassist Sharlee D’Angelo, who certainly doesn’t get enough credit for his thunderous skills. Their truly magnificent set was brought to a close with “Nemesis”, the instrumental “Snow Bound”, which saw the Amott’s take centre stage, followed by “We Will Rise” and then finally “Fields of Desolation” from Arch Enemy’s first album, “Black Earth” which should silence those who complain about the lack of pre-Gossow material. In Manchester Arch Enemy truly stole the show and were on top form, with a set list like this one can only hope they will come back to spoil us again.

John Consterdine