Today Is The Day/Fashion Week/ Made Of Teeth at Boston Music Room, London - live

To call the sparse assembly that greet openers MADE OF TEETH [6] a crowd would be ambitious, but it’s to the trio’s credit that they plough through their rumbling, blackened noise with complete commitment all the same, even if they could do with a touch more personality. FASHION WEEK [6] are blessed with a wickedly dry sense of humour and material that glues together the art rock leanings of Slint with the pure brutality of Unsane, but unfortunately much of the nuance of their recorded output is absent in the live environment. Essentially, though, everything has been meaningless up to this point, as TODAY IS THE DAY [9] remain an utterly astonishing, nightmarish trip. The levels of intensity that frontman Steve Austin still displays while performing the songs from Temple Of The Morning Star, currently celebrating its 20th anniversary, are genuinely unnerving. Many bands, from Neurosis to Converge, have made a cult following from shining a light on the deepest, darkest reaches of the human psyche, but both have moments of reflection, restraint, beauty and humanity. Not so Today Is The Day, who seem to take a cold-blooded, reptilian delight in relentlessly torturing their audience like a constrictor watching the colour drain from its victim’s face. After 90 minutes, Steve humbly, genuinely thanks those present, giving us a rare glimpse of the man behind the sonic terrorism, before molesting Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Then they leave, having provided surely the most violently nihilistic live experience that 2017 will throw up.