Despite being one of the least hygienic gigs you could attend at the start of a pandemic, London’s Nambucca was none-the-less still packed out for the return of German black metal lunatics Darkened Nocturn Slaughtercult.

There’s this theory that faced with potentially disastrous situations, people go through a period of denial – which explains why they finish off their meals in a burning restaurant, take a really long time to evacuate a building that is about to collapse, or perhaps why they stand in front of a crystal-eyed Polish witchess spitting fake blood all over them whilst a new respiratory virus grips the world.

At soundcheck, the guitars are as cold as ice, very much Under a Funeral Moon – ‘Is that trebly enough for you?’, a nearby chap asked of his friend. We were all craving that cleansing wind of white noise perhaps, and certainly the enthusiastic chap at the front with the swastikas on his long sleeve shirt. Hilarious!

With blast-beats going as well, the hyper fizz is as spookily fractal as the sound on Frozen Shadows’ Dans Les Bras Des Immortels, so it wasn’t a surprise that later on some songs were only really discernible by the drums and the bass in this set; however, the back line of this band is really good, with lots of interesting rhythms, something they’ve achieved across all their albums in fact, despite that so much of the material is blisteringly fast.

Opening with the first track from new album Mardom the crowd goes nuts. It really does sound amazing, I must say.

I expected them to do more from this album but only recognised one other track, so it was mainly a spread of old stuff tonight.

If you’ve ever seen them, then you’ll know the ritual – she ends up drinking fake blood and dribbling it everywhere, and then towards the end of the set, flobbing it over the audience. After an hour, to be honest, if you didn’t know the songs and couldn’t fill in the sonic gaps yourself, then the music would start to wear a bit thin, so at least we have a health hazard to keep us entertained, I guess. They finish with Nocturnal March, which has the crowd breaking into a dance. For encore, they come back, of course, for The Dead Hate The Living, and Bearer of Blackest Might.

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Overall? Worth seeing once, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing her front BETHLEHEM though, she really does has a fantastic voice. It’s also at Nambucca, in October….if we’re not halfway through Ragnarok by then!

If you missed it, Graham of High Speed Hangover Podcast managed to video the whole gig here: