Karnivool

On Sunday night, Kristy and I joined Dean and Leanne for what was undoubtably one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to: Karnivool. They played at the O2 Academy at Islington, however it was in the upstairs venue which I’d never been to before (let alone knew that it existed)! It’s very small and intimate – maximum capacity is only 300 people – which meant no matter where you were standing, you had a great view of the action.

Kanivool are a Perth band who’ve been touring the UK as support act for Skindred; however on Sunday night, their roles were reversed – Skindred came out as a bit of a surprise and played as the support band for Karnivool! And my what a surprise it was – if you’ve never heard any of Skindred’s music you should check it out. Imagine if Bob Marley joined a heavy rock band, and that’s pretty much what you’d get…

There was one other support band called “Forever Never” who were far too loud for the little venue. All I could hear was distortion – and that was with earplugs in. I was glad when Karnivool took the stage about an hour later.

Karnivool’s songs are generally quite progressive (typically 8 minutes in length or longer), with multiple “stages”, often with differing time signatures. They’re so complex that I had trouble believing that they’d be able to play them convincingly live; however, about one minute into the first song, my doubts were erased – these guys are awesome musicians!

There was three songs that I was really hoping to hear them play – Deadman, Cote and New Day, and they did all three of them! I was one happy fanboy.

gerrod.com rating: 10/10.