ARCHSPIRE + ABORTED + ORGANECTOMY

30 Jan

Written By Tom Wilson

THE NEED FOR SPEED

Wednesday 28th January 2026

Written by Tom Wilson
Photographed by: Rashid AlKamraikhi

I Feel The Need!

It’s the first night of ARCHSPIRE’s highly anticipated “Return to Prison Island” tour with ABORTED and ORGANECTOMY, and “highly anticipated” might not cut it, because the first band hasn’t even started and the merch line at the Triffid stretches back to the kitchen and curls around all the way to the foot of the stairs up to the smoking balcony. The merch staff are working tirelessly, and by the end of the night the place has been almost picked clean. It’s the first night of the tour, so I can only hope that they ordered some more for other cities! I just wish I’d checked that they weren’t sold out of my size before waiting twenty minutes. Whoopsie!

Fortunately, the riffs are all still available, and ORGANECTOMY use only the most groovy to drop the hammer on The Triffid. Having come all the way from Christchurch, New Zealand, they lean heavily towards the “slam” part of death metal, eschewing technicality and worshipping the blunt, brutal pound of down-tuned riffs. As they point out between songs, they are the slowest band on the bill, and the sound they make is not fancy, but my god does it move you, and the crowd are soon showing their appreciation. So are the band, who aren’t shy with expressing how grateful they are to be playing a show in another country with these bands. Hope they come back soon!

In the lead up to this gig, I noticed a lot of people very, very excited to see Belgian noisemakers ABORTED. For some, they’re the main attraction, and they waste no time putting on one hell of a show as The Triffid is pulled into a grind vortex of clattering drums and furious vocals – their frontman miming shooting a gun in time with the snare.

I started the day by doing legs in the gym. Why on earth am I telling you this? Because it turns out it’s leg day for The Triffid too! Frontman Sven "Svencho" de Caluwé wants the mosh pit to put in the work, and whenever he yells “It’s time for sports”, the circle pit grinds to a halt and starts pumping up and down as the occupants do squats! His between-song banter is brutally cynical and absolutely hilarious, but I won’t do him the disservice of quoting any of it here (because it would not look good), other than to say that his response to a heckle involving his mother had me audibly gasp. Given that one of the shirts they have for sale in the lobby would give CRADLE OF FILTH’s infamous Jesus is a C*nt design a run for its money, they’re clearly not for the easily offended, and Sven expresses his gratitude at being in a country where you can say “c*nt” onstage, before getting the entire Triffid chanting it. What a bunch of good c*nts.

ARCHSPIRE first popped up on my radar when I saw the video of their mothers reacting to the ultra-violent video for Drone Corpse Aviator, and that clip taught me two things: they are phenomenal musicians, and they don’t take themselves too seriously (which can be very refreshing in the über-serious realm of death metal). Both of those things are readily apparent from the moment new drummer Spencer Moore counts in Bleed the Future. He’s a sight to behold tonight, and not because of his garish Hawaiian shirt. I spent eleven years in the army, and I’ve fired belt-fed machine guns that were slower than ARCHSPIRE (and about as noisy!). But this isn’t just a BPM contest. The songs are intricate and memorable, and the riffs would still be memorable even if they weren’t played at dizzying speed.

After shooting his three songs, Sense photographer and bass monster Rashid AlKamraikhi is taking in the set from beside me, and after a particularly sizzling display on the thick strings, leaned over and said, “Can your review just say “Oh, fuck off!”?” He’s definitely not alone, and it would be rough to be confident in your own abilities after seeing a performance this astonishing. ARCHSPIRE’s irrepressible and incorrigible frontman Oli is in fine form tonight, looking like a rapper with his gold chain and “I HUNT DOG C*NT” singlet, taking the 1000-words-per-minute velocity of rappers like BUSTA RHYMES and TECH N9NE and applying it to death metal gutturals. The result is a deep gurgle so percussive it’s almost like a second drum beat, illustrated brilliantly by new track Carrion Ladder.

His between-song banter is, depending on who you are, either hilarious or juvenile, and one story about meeting a homeless man who became their new drummer brings the house down. They get two punters up onstage to do a shoey, but not before they add an extra taste of Australia (a giant tablespoon of Vegemite). Oli hands the winner his “prize”, a shirt designed by their drummer, who “has an arts degree”. It’s a white shirt with a slogan scribbled on it that I’m hesitant to even write down, so the photo will have to suffice! For the finale of Drone Corpse Aviator, Oli splits the crowd down the middle for a “Wall of Foreskin”, with circumcised men on one side and original recipe willies on the other, and the results are absolute bedlam. I haven’t seen that many dicks collide since …

… Actually, you know what? I’ll leave the jokes to Oli.