Two of Death Metal’s most important bands ever on the same bill!?!?! Yes please! Ignoring the two support bands (or more accurately, missing them due to London traffic), the legendary Dying Fetus take the stage and the big bald men in the pit whip up a storm within the first few notes.

People are literally jumping on each other, fists are flying, and with the inevitable beat down only ever seconds away, the pit is a very dangerous place to be. New tracks like ‘Shepherd’s Commandment’ go down just as well as classics like ‘Pissing in the Mainstream’, and it is a joy to see how ridiculously tight the band are. Now slimmed down to a three piece, they sound heavier and more brutal than ever. My personal highlight was midway through the set when the band rips out my favourite song by them, ‘Justifiable Homicide’! Fucking amazing song, delivered with almost scary levels of intensity, and it just keeps on going!

After that masterful show of slamming, razor sharp death metal brutality, Cannibal Corpse may have had a hard job of following, if they were any lesser band. However Alex Webster and Co do not play by halves and Cannibal Corpse show tonight why they are so rightly considered one of the best death metal bands ever. Tight, loud, uncompromising, the band are on the form of their lives, even better than the last two times I’ve seen them. Probably because it’s the first time I’ve seen them headline.

Corpsegrinder is a natural frontman, keeping the crowds energy levels up by basically baiting them to windmill faster than him. Not a chance. He could be his own off shore wind farm. The Koko is quite a good venue for old skool death metal, cramped, sweaty, and with Cannibal Corpse playing to ear bleeding levels, this feels like a real event. Drawing from their now extensive back catalogue, Cannibal Corpse show that they have basically never put out a bad album, with ‘Skull Full of Maggots’ from 1990’s Eaten Back to Life sounding as brilliant as ever, and just as essential as the stomping ‘Priests of Sodom’ from this year’s Evisceration Plague. Highlights from a set of supreme quality included ‘Fucked With a Knife’ (dedicated to all the ladies in the house), ‘Make them Suffer’, ‘The Wretched Spawn’. But to be honest, it is all about the closing medley of ‘Hammer Smashed Face’ and ‘Stripped Raped and Strangled’ (the closest thing the a death metal sing along I have seen). If you thought it was hot and violent before, you haven’t seen anything yet! The whole crowd literally beats the fuck out of each other. I thoroughly satisfying end to an awesome night of death metaling.

Carl Sucharyna Thomas.