CINDERS FALL
The Railway, Winchester, UK - 15th October 2009
Line-up: Cinders Fall + Support
Review by Jon Wilde, (crappy phone) pics by Jon Wilde
I was down at The Railway in Winchester on Thursday to see Cinders Fall, an up and coming melodic death metal act from the UK. Their recently released EP, The Reckoning (read the Rock Realms review here) showed what an excess of talent the guys have. The only complaint was the obvious similarity to the work of At The Gates - if you could really call that a complaint - and the songs not being as good as I would have liked.
There were three other metal bands onstage before Cinders Fall. Have to be honest, I didn't take any notice of them as I was too busy sitting in the very pleasant beer garden chatting with a mate. What snippets I did catch varied between good and awful...so not sure whether I missed anything or not.
Anyway, come 10.30pm, it was time for singer Anthony Masters and chums to take to the stage and lay waste the crowd of perhaps, er, 30 people. The stage area in The Railway really isn't that big, so even a small crowd gives a great atmosphere.
A couple of songs in and, to be honest, I wasn't that impressed. Maybe it was them warming up, maybe it was me getting used to the noise. Not sure but it was more 'impressive' than 'enjoyable'. Cinders Fall are as tight as a termite's rectum, but that's irrelevant if the songs aren't good enough. Fortunately, it all went skyward from there.
Don't ask me what individual songs they played because I have no f*cking idea. The title track from their latest EP was there, but the rest of it was a wall of unrelenting noise...and what a noise it was! It's too long since I've heard some proper fast, precise, achingly heavy metal and Cinders Fall blew me the f*ck away. After that initial flat spot the stuff cascading from the speakers sounded like the soundtrack to a cage fight in Hades. Watching a pit form in a room little bigger than my lounge was genius. The quality of the performances was off the scale.
Front man Anthony deserves special praise, not only for his vocals but for his people management skills. He's playing in a genre that can take itself way too seriously, but he was laughing and joking with the crowd like a cheeky little comedian. Top bloke. The enthusiasm of the rest of the band was spot on too. There are few better sights than a keyboard player - in this case Colin Eatherton - headbanging like a deranged lunatic. There are few better sounds than a drummer - Laurence Al-Shaar - double kick drumming like his feet are attached to a go-kart driving down a cobbled street in an earthquake.
All in all then, Cinders Fall were bloody excellent. Yes, they still need more good tracks and, yes, they do still sound too much like At The Gates (although live it's mixed with a strong hint of Lamb Of God), but if they keep doing what they did last night there'll be no stopping them.
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