Live Review: Black Peaks @ King Tuts, Glasgow (14/10/18)

After the release of Black Peaks latest album All That Divides I feel like I’ve been raving about this band non-stop to anyone who will listen (you can read my review of the new album here). After hearing about how great the band are live I knew I had to take any opportunity to see them and when I found out they were playing King Tuts in Glasgow as part of the album release tour I jumped at the chance.

King Tuts is a great, small and intimate venue and if you can get a good spot in front of the stage a good band can really suck you in. My last gig at King Tuts was Jamie Lenman so I was excited to go back.

A few days before the gig I discovered the support acts were Gold Key and Bossk, two bands I had no idea about but I was keen to turn up on time for a change and check them out as I’m quite bad for being late and missing the support and the potential for discovering new great bands.

Gold Key were on first and played a good warm up set. They played some fairly straight up rock songs but there were some massive riffs in there and they locked into some pretty infectious grooves at times. Unfortunately from where I was standing (off to one side) the sound on the vocals wasn’t great so it was hard to make out the lyrics but overall I quite enjoyed them and they’re worth checking out if you’re not into super heavy music. I think this softer side served as a good way to ease into the brutality that was to come later.

After a short break came Bossk. It hadn’t really occurred to me beforehand that the band were named after a reptilian bounty hunter momentarily seen in Star Wars Episode V (bounty hunters! we don’t need their scum!), but my brain must have as I turned up to the show wearing an Empire Strikes back t-shirt. Nerd coincidences aside, Bossk were something else. A guitarist, bassist and drummer turned up on stage and started churning out some slow atmospheric melodies whilst the smoke machine filled the room and eventually all you could see were three pulsating silhouettes before the lights flicked on, the guitarist stepped forward, raising his fist before the pounding, grinding riffs slammed in like a sledgehammer to the face. I had managed to find a great spot a few rows from the front, surrounded by the smoke and the atmosphere was quite incredible. After this introduction I presumed they were some kind of instrumental progressive metal band and settled into the grooves, punishing riffs and pounding drums but all of a sudden in a “where’d that cunt* come from?” moment, a singer appeared from nowhere and began to deliver some throat searing screams before disappearing as quickly as he had arrived (*note: in Scotland, cunt is often used casually or as a term of endearment. If that’s what we call our friends, what do we call our enemies?). And thus Bossk continued with a number of long form instrumentals each building to a punishing crescendo with the vocalist returning every now and again to add the icing to the sweaty, volcanic cake. I have no idea what he was saying but it was pretty powerful regardless. Bossk: a tremendous band putting on a tremendous show. Seek them out if you can.

So, after the pleasantly intense surprise of Bossk I was well and truly pumped for the main event and found myself a good spot up behind the mixing desk out of the impending chaos (I’m getting too old for that nonsense, plus I’m a speccy git which doesn’t help in a mosh pit). On came the band who fired straight into Can’t Sleep, the first track from the new album, a great song to both bang your head to and sing along to with enormous riffs, crashing drums and bending and twisting guitars. The drums and guitars sounded absolutely massive and the frontman’s stage presence is something to behold, commanding the writhing crowd with ease and constantly encouraging everyone to go absolutely bloody mental. His ability to switch from crushing screams to melodic singing is quite something to behold. I can’t remember the exact order of play but they blasted through a number of new and old songs including The Midnight Sun (he actually does THAT scream live and it’s unbelievable), Electric Fires, Aether (an absolute monster of a track with an unbelievably catchy chorus), Eternal Light (a creeping song with a pulsating helicopter blade bass riff and a soaring chorus full of punishing screams), Crooks, Saviour, Glass Built Castles and Say You Will (all from debut album Statues and all absolutely crushing, especially Glass Built Castles with its “you’re blinded in the night, you’re giving up your fight for your LIIIIIFFFFEEE” chorus and Say You Will which was fucking huge, particularly the drums and bass throughout and the unbelievable screams of “SAY YOU WILL”). The main set closed with Fate I & II which to me sounds deliriously like Silverchair at their heaviest (and what I’d much rather Daniel Johns was doing now) and ended to rapturous chants of “ONE MORE TUNE” as is customary in Scotland. Said “one more tune” turned out to be Home, one of the biggest tracks from All That Divides (and much like Say You Will just sounded massive). It lulls you into the false sense of security that it’s going to be a slow burner opening with brooding gravelly vocals before unleashing a catastrophically devastating natural disaster of a riff before switching back and forth between destructive riffs, snarled vocals and a more melodic, crooning chorus. An unbelievable closing song to an unbelievable set.

Black Peaks have quickly become one of my new favourite bands. They’re British and destined to go on to much bigger things so give them a listen and if you like what you hear, buy their album, go see them and shout about them to anyone who will listen.

Peace out.