LIVE REVIEW: SLAUGHTER TO PREVAIL + TO THE GRAVE AT NORTHCOTE THEATRE, MELBOURNE. FEBRUARY 27, 2025
by BRENDAN DELAVERE
KNOTFEST is in town and the first of a tsunami of sideshows starts tonight in Melbourne with the Russian battalion of deathcore, Slaughter To Prevail.
Having just finished touring with the most insane sounding deathcore band to exist, Lorna Shore, Sydney’s To The Grave are backing it up by supporting the second most intense deathcore band around, and kudos to them. The Sydney five piece have worked hard in the past couple years, touring constantly with the likes Shadow Of Intent, Signs of the Swarm, Carnifex and countless other brutality peddling bands.
As the sole support tonight, the five piece had the crowd crushing from the get go. “Shut up!” snaps frontman Dane Evans sarcastically as they rip through ‘Forced Diet Reassignment’ and ‘Dxe Or Die’. The call for crowd surfers comes frequently, and with ‘Vegan Day of Violence’, so does the call for violence as against animal abusers and the rape of the earth by factory farming. ‘Burn Your Local Butcher’ and ‘Wastage’ keeping security and the pit ninjas busy. Closing with ‘Made In Aus’, a ruthless onslaught to set the mood for the night.
It feels like the Russian juggernaut Slaughter To Prevail were only just here for Good Things 2023. The Northcote theatre was pretty damn close to a sell out and the gorgeous venue was sweating from the walls. Opening up the carnage with ‘Bonebreake’r, the smiling demon, masked Alex Terrible grinned a bloody, toothy smile. Baba Yaga ripped right into the crowd, fists swinging in the pit, Alex Terrible removd his mask, veins popping as the maniac screamed down the house. The ‘Made in Russia’ bullet vest casually tossed aside, Jack Simmons and Dmitry Mamedov a mess of hair flicks, brutal riffing, staring down the crowd with their black eyed demon masks.
The Northcote Theatre was a rumble of pit ninjas, push pits and the largest wall of death during ‘Koschei’ the beautiful theatre has seen. Despite the violence, the show wasn’t without its hiccups, Terrible’s vocals were low in the mix for the first few songs and Evgeny Novikov’s snare drum was louder than necessary, though both these issues were fixed early on as the sound for the remainder of the show was equal parts brutal and fucking brutal! ‘Viking’, ‘Bratva’ and newly debuted track ‘Grizzly’ kept the energy high, the pit never ceasing in its attempt to hurt.
The absolutely beastly ‘Behelit’, Alex screaming insane amounts of spit on the front row, sans microphone and finally, ‘Kid Of Darkness’ finish the very short set. Almost pointless to call it an encore as the band were back on stage within seconds for one final blast of merciless, vicious, Russian deathcore: ‘Demolisher’! The pit was remorseless, this reviewer was caught in the swirling mass of bodies, sweaty and violent. Despite a running time of 50 minutes, this set was a non stop demonstration in unrelenting savagery.
