This year’s Metal 2 The Masses London competition has seen a huge array of talented self-signed and unsigned bands compete over twenty-one shows spanning seven months, and it all comes down to this – the Grand Final. On Saturday six bands competed for their chance to play the New Blood stage at Bloodstock Open Air Festival. Metal 2 The Masses is a strict non-pay2play competition, so all the bands have been judged purely on their musical talent rather than how many tickets they can sell, making it a great initiative to help unsigned bands as well as the local music scene.
After twenty-one shows at The Big Red in Holloway, the venue for the grand final was The Dome in Tufnell Park and tonight’s competing bands were: Prolapse A.D, Dirty Ol’ Crow, Dead Before Mourning, The Brood, Serpentyne together with Wildcard winners Annunciation. Judging the competition were Rob Bannister and Adam Westgate from Bloodstock Open Air Festival. It was a busy day in London with both Pride celebrations and the England vs. Sweden World Cup game, but when the venue doors opened at 5pm there were plenty of metalheads eager for the competition to begin!
First to take to the stage were Annunciation, who made it to the final as the winners of a Wildcard vote. The put on a brutal, energetic and fast-paced performance that got everyone thoroughly in the mood for the evening’s competition and set the bar suitably high.
Next up were The Brood bringing their brand of grinding hardcore to Tufnell Park. As with their previous performances, the band used spoken-word intros to add a sense of drama to their songs, which were delivered with palpable ion and determination.
One of my favourite bands of the competition next; Dead Before Mourning. They always give 110% to their performances and tonight was no exception. Vocalist Matt snarled into the mic as Dom windmilled his hair like he just didn’t care as he melted the faces of the crowd with his sick riffs.
Fourth to perform were symphonic / folk / rock / six-piece Serpentyne, who brought a different musical style to the competition, mixing medieval themes with biting electric guitars and pounding drums. They pulled out all the stops with their set which saw vocalist Maggibeth wearing a black horned headdress during their first song, together with Vaughan’s infamous bagpipe solo.
The penultimate competing band to take to the stage were another of my personal favourite bands of the competition this year; Prolapse A.D.. Their unique brand of comedy thrash metal never fails to bring a smile to everyone’s faces, and they put on a splendidly humorous, energetic and ionate performance featuring all the crowd favourites about bestiality, necrophilia and extra-large appendages.
The final competing band to perform were energetic rock n roll band Dirty Ol’ Crow who wowed the crowd with their in-ya-face groovy rock tracks. Vocalist Vik just as animated as I had seen him at the semi-finals of the competition, and his enthusiasm was mirrored by his bandmates.
An exciting addition to the evening’s proceedings was a stand-up comedy performance by Scott Chesworth (of The Mariana Hollow) who debuted his unique routine on a gig stage and absolutely smashed it. His performance went down brilliantly with the crowd.
Whilst the judges deliberated everyone was treated to a performance by special guests runners-up all dayer back in April. I had been looking forward to seeing these ladies play live for ages and they certainly lived up to the hype. Sinead, Saffire, Agnes and Vikki put on a brilliant and ionate performance and I will definitely be going to see one of their live shows again in the future!
After much deliberation, the results were in and the overall winners of Metal 2 The Masses London are Dead Before Mourning, who will play the New Blood stage at Bloodstock Open Air Festival this summer, and The Brood were announced as runners up. Huge congratulations to them as well as all the other bands who competed not only today but throughout the whole competition – the standard was very high indeed this year! Huge thanks as always to Mick Wood from MonstaEnts for organising this whole competition, together with every single band who competed, and everyone who came along to live music. Your media team covering the competition on behalf of The Moshville Times this year has been comprised of Katie Frost, Ryan Whitwell, Danni Garner and Mark Wincott.
Photos by Katie Frost Photography
Wow – what a fantastic review of a fantastic Grand Final – but as with every step of this journey Moshville’s coverage has been outstanding.
Thank so much to the whole crew – you played a big part in bringing Metal to the London Masses.
Cheers \m/
You’re very welcome, Mick. Thanks for having us along for the ride!