Erra, Silent Planet, Resolve, Signals @ Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide 8/3/2025
The turbines are turned on however they are doing little to lower the temperature as ERRA’s energy inflamed performance keeps the room cooking at 240 degrees. The sweat drenched clothing, the stinky armpits, the running make up. This was a show in extreme conditions that everyone was melted to.
As the Adelaide summer inexplicably continues with extreme heat, the queue to see the show (the first on the tour to sell out) was lengthy and excited.
While ERRA are the headliners, a support cast featuring Californians Silent Planet, Resolve from France and Adelaide’s own Signals means we are promised a night that will be fast, furious and be all killer, no filler.
It’s Signals we start with and the room is already that heavily packed you could be forgiven for thinking they were headliners. With a furious mix of brutal hardcore with metalcore, the five piece don’t mess about and tear through their set like an arsonist on a hot day. I say five piece however an assortment of guests vocalists join the fray and the half hour set flies by in a sonic and visual blur, the band watched by ERRA on the sidelines with approving nods.
Hailing from France, Resolve step in and have the place stomping immediately. Dressed like they’ve appeared in The Matrix, there is something about their music that lives on the periphery of the normal metalcore world. As one friend mentions, it’s impressive that lyrically English is their second language and yet it all makes sense.
Guitarist Antonin Carre hair is a blur of head-banging savagery and they have breakdowns that have drum fills, how exotic and welcomed. Everyone is clapping to Death Awaits while Molotov is as dangerous as the title suggests. There’s something about European bands that just give a different type of energy, a pace that sprints to the end, then runs back to beginning then sprints off again. Seems we are all for it too.
Silent Planet have been nonstop since their groundbreaking opus Superbloom dropped seventeen months ago. Fresh from heating up stages in Japan, the band open with Offworlder and in Collider we really get to see vocalist Garrett Russell’s range.
The bands subtlety and diversity within their songs is perfectly controlled to make sure it loses none of its power, whether it’s the crowd moshing to ‘Euphoria’ or the new narrative Russell drops in leading into Dreamwalker.
Most of the set is Superbloom focussed but make no mistake, Silent Planet are not just a metalcore band, they are artists, each night painting a story with their music and we are the canvas. Tonight was a beautiful exhibit of artwork.
With every band leaving a scorched earth mark on stage when finished, and an audience losing weight in a sauna of a room, it leaves ERRA to squeeze out just a little more from an audience on reserves. They do it of course, and it’s mesmeric to watch.
As lights flash, a roar greets the Alabama natives and Slow Sour Bleed greets the crowd in return. The pits are huge (somehow still going) and everyone is clapping. Pale Iris you can visibly see the transference of energy between band and crowd, as each bang of the head is in unison.
JT Cavey, singer of ERRA, bounces, growls and purrs in a way few can that has the audience follow him like the Pied Piper, while Jesse Cash holds everything together with blend of searing riffs and clean vocals.
Half the set is tracks from recent album Cure, well you would, and the bands ability to execute those songs with soul makes even the most exhausted fan run right back into the mosh pit for more.
There is singing, clapping, horns in the air and everyone is fixated on what’s next that the heat becomes secondary. In fact, the only disappointment from tonight is bands didn’t play longer. Now that’s a great show.
Live Review By Iain McCallum