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Bullet For My Valentine (w/ Tesseract, Bleed From Within) @ Victoria Warehouse (Manchester, UK) on November 4, 2021 [Photos & Show Review]

Welsh metallers Bullet For My Valentine celebrate the release of their new album with an anthem-packed set in Manchester. Read our review.

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Later that evening Bullet For My Valentine drop their self-titled, seventh album and, with some critics and fans alike commenting on a lack of bite in recent releases, recent singles have shown the band are still capable of packing a punch with some of their heaviest material in a fair few years.

On the latest date of their current UK run, the band have brought with them two suitably heavy support acts. First up are Scottish bruisers Bleed From Within who fire up the crowd with their crushing breakdowns and moshpit-inciting ragers. A ridiculously tight outfit, the band delivers another pummelling thirty minutes of Scottish rage.

Tesseract, on the other hand, sits at the opposite end of the heavy music spectrum. An interesting choice of support for a band with such a mainstream appeal as the headliners but one that, as with Bleed From Within, show they’re certainly worth your attention. Playing to a packed venue, they may not be to everyone’s taste but their wall-shaking, proggy tech-metal is delivered with flawless precision.

A classic nu-metal playlist pumps out over the PA prior to Welsh metallers Bullet For My Valentine taking to the stage working this packed out, amped-up crowd into a right frenzy. It is quite the sight seeing bodies flying across the top of the crowd as anthems by Slipknot, Limp Bizkit and Korn work this crowd into a frenzy. Feeding off the energy, the headliners hit the stage and career straight into the brutal new track “Parasite” taken from the aforementioned new album. As if to prove a point to the doubters, it’s a thunderous opener and one that settles any doubts that Bullet doesn’t write heavy songs more.

Bullet For My Valentine (w/ Tesseract) @ O2 Victoria Warehouse (Manchester, UK) on November 4, 2021

Using every inch of the stage, the British metal outfit looks comfortably at home and, by the time they grind out the intro to fan favourite “Your Betrayal,” they’ve got this crowd sitting right in the palm of their hands. Perfectly mixing up new and old tracks, one thing pops into your head looking down their setlist and that’s how many absolute bangers the band has in their seven-album armoury. From the old gems like “4 Words (To Choke Upon)” to more recent ragers like “Scream Aim Fire,” it’s hard to deny that Matt Tuck and Co know how to write the kind of massive arena-filling anthem that will get your head moving.

Elsewhere, newer tracks like the pummelling “Knives” are just as crushing while anyone who still doubts the band after they run through the massive “Tears Don’t Fall” before whipping out a song as monstrous as “Waking The Demon” to wrap things up clearly needs to spend a bit of time revisiting their back catalogue because, on the evidence of this setlist, Bullet has still got plenty of bite in them yet.

Bullet For My Valentine Set List:

1. Parasite
2. Over It
3. Your Betrayal
4. Piece of Me
5. Rainbow Veins
6. 4 Words (To Choke Upon)
7. Worthless
8. Don’t Need You
9. Knives
10. Under Again
11. Scream Aim Fire
12. Take It Out On Me
13. You Want a Battle? (Here’s a War)
14. The Last Fight
15. Shatter
16. Tears Don’t Fall
17. Waking the Demon

I have an unhealthy obsession with bad horror movies, the song Wanted Dead Or Alive and crap British game shows. I do this not because of the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll lifestyle it affords me but more because it gives me an excuse to listen to bands that sound like hippos mating.

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