A PALE HORSE NAMED DEATH, Awake By Design, Blood Runs Deep @Slade Rooms 26/1/12

Surprise is one of the great joys of gig going. Always has been, always will be.

That feeling when you turn up to watch a concert and see a band you have never heard of and what they do sounds so damn good you just have to buy their CD.

This is what happened the very second that Swiss band Blood Runs Deep took to the stage. Dark, miserable swathes of metal complete with a layer of keyboards all combine to make a racket of the type not heard since the earliest Paradise Lost CD’s.

The bands own website describes their music as “rather slow and depressing”, but that doesn’t do it justice. Singer/Bassman Stefan Vida only chooses to introduce one song – “Suicide is Life” – but the half hour they are on stage is a thrilling one.

The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for local band Awake By Design. They try, and they try hard – singer Adrian Powell spends more time on the floor of the venue than on the stage -  but there’s no real “wow” factor. Musically there is much to commend them, all Maiden-esque twin guitar attack, but too many of the songs tread a path we have heard so many times before – and better.

Brooklyn’s A Pale Horse Named Death released a magnificent record last year called “…And Hell Will Follow Me.” A heavy, doomy masterpiece it was a favourite of RTM’s. Tonight, though, the band – which includes former Type O Negative, current Life Of Agony man Sal Abruscato and another ex Type O man, current Seventh Void drummer Johnny Kelly  - is suitably cheesed off.

The curse of the Slade Rooms sound has struck again and some grumpy looking Americans are tuning their instruments unhappily as all manner of feedback is happening. Eventually they are happy (ish) and things get going.

And they get going in fine fashion with “To Die In Your Arms,” with even Abruscato proclaiming that “maybe tonight wont be so awful after all.”

And he’s right. It’s actually very good.

As you would expect from a band who only has a debut album to plunder they mine …And Hell pretty extensively but the likes of “And Crows Descend Upon Me” and “Heroin Train” are just great songs.

It isn’t an evening for people who like cheerful music, as songs like “Die Alone” and “Pill Head” would tell you, but by the time they have ending with the crushing, almost punk “Bath In My Blood” there are plenty of smiles around on stage and off.

“Maybe I will see you again but maybe I will die soon” says Abruscato by way of a goodbye, which is, I suppose, one way of looking at these things.

Doom and gloom doesn’t get better – or moodier - than this.