Slaughter To Prevail, To The Grave @ Northcote Theatre, Melbourne 27/2/2025
It’s that time of year again when a big metal festival arrives, and we all make a pilgrimage across the country to worship. This time it’s Knotfest and around the festivals, are of course the sideshows. Tonight at the Northcote Theatre in Melbourne, it’s Russia’s Slaughter To Prevail.
To The Grave, fresh off a ludicrously successful run with Lorna Shore, take the lead though, and the venue, with the force and brutality of an invading army. I mean saying you are from Sydney and calling everyone the c word in Melbourne is a statement of intent. To be fair, they back it up.
Aggression, anger, and riffs that make you bladder go weak. The bowel moving bottom end is musical armageddon. The lyrics, pro-animal liberation, are just as powerful and poignant in that way you would smash your hand with a hammer. My final word on To The Grave, after seeing them twice in a few weeks, is if you want to wake up feeling invigorated in the morning, put them as your alarm clock. You’ll be alert all day long.
The horned masked vigilantes of Slaughter To Prevail take the stage and hammer through Bonebreaker like, well, a bone breaker.
The crowd are ignited. Pits, surfers, mauls even, break out as the Russians land meaty groove riff after riff.
Alex Terrible is unmasked, ripped and foreboding in a way that demands your attention the same way the electric beat to electric blue lights do in Baba Yaga.
Hands wave as much as hair waves. The riffs bang as much as the drums bang and when the beat drop, it’s atomic.
In a relatively short set, there are numerous atomic moments. Viking, Bravta and Grizzly all sound apocalyptic. The venue literally shakes to the beat.
Alex advises there will be a new album later this year so we will not spoil any of that, however the band tear through their one hour set, a literal warm up, with a heavy artillery of loaded tracks. Tomorrow, at Knotfest, promises to be epic.
Live Review By Iain McCallum