Metalcore Royalty Take No Prisoners on a Night of Pure Carnage….

Words & photos by James Crisp (@james_taking_pictures) | Sep 25, 2025

---

It’s a Wednesday night in Wolverhampton, but The Halls feels like the end of the world and no one’s complaining. A four-band lineup this stacked doesn’t just tour, it invades. From the first growl to the last singalong, tonight is a brutal, sweaty love letter to everything heavy, heartfelt, and just the right amount of unhinged.

You want technical death metal at its most feral? Decapitated are here to cave in your skull. There’s no chit-chat, no warm-up, just straight into “Cancer Culture” like they’ve been dared to melt the PA system. Vogg’s riffs slice through the haze like precision-guided missiles, and Eemeli Bodde looks like he’d rather use the mic as a weapon rather than sing into it.

It’s tight. It’s terrifying. It’s everything you want from a band who treat blast beats like artillery fire. By the time “Spheres Of Madness” drops, half the crowd’s already lost their minds, and the other half are trying to survive the pit. Good luck to them.

Fit For An Autopsy take the stage and instantly flip the vibe from chaos to cataclysm. Their riffs don’t just hit, they crush. Joe Badolato’s roar sounds like it’s coming from the centre of the earth, and when “Far From Heaven” kicks in, it’s like watching tectonic plates collide.

There’s atmosphere, there’s menace, and somehow, amid the carnage, there’s beauty. Fit For An Autopsy don’t just play heavy, they make heavy sound emotional. The lights turn icy blue, the crowd sways, and everyone collectively agrees that the end of the world could sound a lot worse than this.

No band brings unity through violence quite like the legendary Hatebreed. The second Jamey Jasta bounds onto the stage, mic in one hand and pure chaos in the other, and the place erupts.

“In Ashes They Shall Reap!” he barks, and it’s off, bodies flying, pits spinning, everyone screaming lyrics like they’ve been waiting all week to lose their voice. There’s no filler, no downtime, just relentless anthems for the disaffected and defiant.

Jasta grins like a man who knows he’s still the boss. “You know what time it is — DESTROY. EVERYTHING.” Cue absolute bedlam. Forty minutes later, we’re sweaty, bruised, smiling, and slightly concussed. Perfect.

You can feel it before they even hit the stage. The lights dim, The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” rings out, and the crowd absolutely loses its mind. People are climbing on shoulders, plastic cups go flying, and then boom the curtain of sound drops. “Strength Of The Mind” detonates like a warhead and Wolverhampton turns into one giant, sweaty mosh pit of joy.

Jesse Leach stands front and centre, arms spread like a preacher before the storm. The man’s voice is a weapon, one minute he’s roaring like an animal, the next he’s hitting those clean, heart-ripping highs that could level tonight’s venue. The emotion pouring out of him is palpable, every scream feels like a purge, every melody like release.

And then there’s Adam D, I’m with stupid t-shirt, grinning, looking like a man who drank far too much coffee and decided to start a riot. He’s everywhere at once: headbanging, spinning, riffing, screaming backing vocals, cracking jokes between songs. He truly is the chaos to Jesse’s catharsis, and together they’re unstoppable.

“Rose Of Sharyn” sends the crowd into a frenzy, a thousand voices shouting every word like it’s gospel. “Reckoning” and “Unleashed” keep the pit in full rotation, a sweaty cyclone of limbs and laughter. When they drop “The Signal Fire,” it’s pure combustion. Jesse howls the first verse like a man possessed, and when that chorus hits, you can feel it reverberate through the floorboards. No Howard Jones guest appearance tonight, but no one’s complaining, the crowd more than makes up for it.

Mid-set, the band takes a breath as Jesse addresses the crowd with gratitude and also to mention that that are now weirdly a “classic rock band”

Then comes “My Curse,” and for three minutes the line between band and audience disappears. Every syllable, every melody, screamed back with heart-on-sleeve sincerity. Killswitch have always understood that heavy music isn’t just aggression, it’s a release.

By the time “The End Of Heartache” lands, people are crying, moshing, and hugging strangers. And when the band finally closes with “My Last Serenade,” the entire room becomes a choir. The final chorus hits like sunrise after a storm, euphoric, unified, deafening.

As the last note fades and the band bows out, there’s that rare, electric silence that only happens when everyone knows they’ve just witnessed something special.

Killswitch Engage don’t just headline, they heal. Two decades in, they’re still writing our personal but combined soundtrack, proving that melody and fury can coexist in the same clenched fist.

Tonight, they reminded everyone why they’re not just the architects of metalcore… they’re still its beating heart.