Sylosis, Heaven Shall Burn & The Black Dahlia Murder Deliver Metal Masterclass at Kentish Town Forum [Show Review]

Texas quintet Life Cycles take to a very small part of the stage, having to play around five drum kits and countless amps and monitors, they set about tearing a hole through the Kentish Town Forum in memorable fashion. They play a floor-breaking, heavy form of hardcore with splashes of thrash riffs and an array of brilliantly crafted, fight club breakdowns. Life Cycles are in the toughest spot of the day, but it doesn’t appear to shake them one bit. They take this opportunity by the balls and leave their mark. A tight, chaotic and explosive performance from a band I hope we hear a lot more from.

It feels like Dutch breakdown machine Distant spends more time playing over here than any other active touring band, and it’s a welcome experience every single time. For a quartet, it’s incredible the decibels of churning thunder they are able to create and the power they exude in a perfect thirty-minute set is absolutely wild. This is metal designed to peel the paint off the walls and bring the heavens crashing through the ceiling, and they do it with such matter-of-fact confidence and ease! Although their name may not be as high on the banners as others, Distant are amongst the elite of the modern “Cinematic Death Metal,” and there is real artistry and craft to their brand of chaos. Long may they continue to grace our shores.

The second of today’s bands from Texas, Frozen Soul, goes a long way to proving the old adage right that everything is bigger out of that great state! Standing at an average height of about 7ft and looking like a WWE Atitude-era wrestling faction, Frozen Soul are as intimidating to look at as they are to listen to. By rights, they should be every old school death metal fan’s favourite up-and-coming band and every younger fan’s new obsession.

They play an uncompromising, uncomfortable, riff and vocal barrage form of metal that feels like you’re trying to block machine gun fire with your head and hands. They also do all of this with a running theme of ice and cold in their lyrics, which, when paired with a completely blue onstage ascetic and a lead singer who looks like an ice giant from Game of Thrones, it absolutely works. Frozen Soul are a fantastic band and send the Kentish Town Forum into the type of frenzy that would suggest that the word is out on them. If you miss bands like Bolthrower, go and invest your time in Frozen Soul and embrace the cold.

In September 2025, Boston, Massachusetts natives Revocation released their first album in three years New God’s, New Masters.” A truly excellent experimental deep dive into what’s possible when applying progressive characteristics to traditional technical death metal. Revocation have been the alchemists of tech death for not far off twenty years now, and are a band well capable of standing out from any lineup they are a part of, but have the range of songs and depth of talent to fit right in.

This is a band that have literally every weapon in their arsenal, from absolutely crushing breakdowns, complex technical melodies, “November Rain”-esque solos and creepy blackened passages of death metal that transition flawlessly into primitive stomps and blasting hellfire. Visually, they look like a whirling dervish of hair and limbs, apart from lead singer, guitarist and mastermind of the band, Dave Davidson, who cuts a very clean cut and business-like figure, even whilst sounding like a man possessed and roaring open the gates of hell. A perfect blast of what feels like scientifically measured and mathematically calculated metal.

I would love to talk about The Black Dahlia Murder without having to reference the tragedy this band has overcome to get to this point as a band, but such is their story that it’s next to impossible to do. When lead singer and co-founder of The Black Dahlia Murder, Trevor Strnad, tragically passed away in 2022, it felt like a sadly familiar story with an all too familiar ending. BUT here we are in 2026, and it really feels like a new sun is dawning for these guys. For the first time, it feels like The Black Dahlia Murder are settled in and well on their way to continuing the legacy of this special band and are very much in the next phase of being what they were always destined to be, one of Death Metal’s legendary bands.

Today and on this stage, TBDM look totally comfortable and in charge of their position on this bill. Now, elder statesmen amongst most lineups, they appear to have their chests out, chins up and thumbs buried deep in the eye sockets of the nightmare fodder they have been singing about for over twenty years now. They bludgeon their way through a perfect mix of old and new songs. “A Vulgar Picture,” “What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse,” and “Nocturnal” all sound like the gore-drenched anthems they were intended to be. Whilst “Panic Hysteric” and set closer “Utopia Black” show the power and unlimited potential of post-2022 Black Dahlia Murder. This band are going nowhere, but the history books, and I can’t wait to see what the next page holds for them.

Now, if heavy metal had a legitimately recognised, gold jacket Hall Of Fame in the same way the NFL and other American sports organisations do, Heaven Shall Burn would be a first ballot entry. When I think of a professional, reliable, influential band who have remained in the top echelons of their peer group throughout the course of their career, they would be absolutely undeniable. After topping the German album charts in 2020 and headlining both Summer Breeze and Wacken Festival in 2023, it’s a comfort to know that they are at least getting the recognition they deserve on home soil. And whilst we wait for the rest of the world to catch up, Heaven Shall Burn return to the UK for the first time since their blistering set at Bloodstock Festival in 2023.

Now armed with a fresh batch of seventeen tracks from last year’s outrageously brilliant release Heimat, it would make sense and be totally understandable if we got a heavy dose of new music in today’s set, which wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. Instead, however, we are gifted a “best of everything post-2004” set from one of, if not the greatest, metalcore band ever (all arguments against are welcome). They have this surging, impenetrable power when they hit top gear, with songs like “Voice Of The Voiceless” and “Combat” which feel like someone has hit the warp speed button and you are merely a passenger, bracing and hurtling through the experience. Songs like “Hunters Will Be Hunted” and “Trespassing The Shores Of Your World” are examples of their dalliance with the more blackened, Nordic extremes, while the folklike melodies and machine-gun blasts of “Thoughts And Prayers” work so incredibly against each other.

You would never know that Heaven Shall Burn were second from the top of the bill in a 2300-capacity venue; this is arena-headliner quality metalcore in any other parallel universe. Stamping out the evening in style with the always popular riff rave “Black Tears,” it’s clear to anyone with eyes and ears that we have witnessed greatness from one of the most criminally under-valued but always outstanding bands in metal.

And now we arrive at the reason we are all here this evening, to pay homage and give our respect to English heavy metal mainstays, Sylosis. Out of the droves and droves of early 2000s metal bands that we were sold as “The Future Of British Metal,” it feels like we are at a point in time now, where the cream of the crop have all risen to the top and are all getting the respect they deserve. Although Sylosis have now spent a very long time paying their dues, clawing their way through the ranks and honing their craft, one of the biggest differences between them and everyone else of that era is how very little their sound has actually changed since the release of their debut album Conclusion Of An Age in 2008.

The one constant of Sylosis has been frontman, guitarist and general musical mastermind Josh Middleton, whose concept for what he wanted Sylosis to be way back in 2008, has come to be proven somewhat visionary given its remaining roots and foundation for them and a recurring prototype for many others. Since 2008, they have delivered six more slices of melodic, death-infused metalcore to their legacy. It’s the latest of which The New Flesh (released the same day as this show) that puts Sylosis at the helm of this ship today, and deservedly so. Bursting out the gates with a new track shows all the confidence in the world, and “Erased” is that damn good of a song that it feels like the perfect tone-setter. Encompassing everything that makes Sylosis so special, from the huge infectious riffs, the blending of devastating and warm melodic vocals, the absolute thunder and surgical procession of the drumming and the thing that they do better than 99% of other bands… Hooks.

Sylosis are the golden standard of metal hooks; songs like “Poison For The Lost,” “Deadwood,” and “All Glory No Valor” should be put in their own wing of a museum titled “How To Deliver A Metal Hook Exhibit” for preservation for generations to come. This setlist takes us back through a gauntlet of well-written, perfectly executed metal heft and fury. Tracks such as “Where The Sky Ends” and “I Sever” are devastatingly heavy but feature huge melodic, symphonic breakdowns that sound enormous in this setting.

They turn the crowd inside out, and the sing-alongs sound like hymn sheets have been handed out; these guys are clearly beloved and rightly so. Rounding out what has been a spectacular afternoon and evening, they bring it home with the title track from the new record “The New Flesh” and give the headbangers (of which everyone is at this point) one last chance to do irreparable damage to their necks and ingrain one last core memory of how fantastic this band really are.

I will end this with two pleas. Firstly, if you haven’t done so already, go and work your way through the back catalogues of Heaven Shall Burn and Sylosis whilst they are still fully active and touring. You are living in a time when greatness exists; don’t miss out on being part of it and having it be part of your musical journey. My second plea is for people to support and lift up homegrown talent. Sylosis have EVERYTHING needed for a big spot at Bloodstock Festival, I would go as far as to say they deserve and make more sense for a headline spot than a certain other band on this year’s lineup. But they only get these opportunities if we get behind them, and out of all the current UK bands of their class, they deserve the next big opportunity, and tonight goes a long way to proving this.