Live Review London, UK

After a couple of bad experiences on the road, Europe is currently the only place A Pale Horse Named Death are keen to book headlining tours, so with a new album out, they wasted no time in announcing another run with Finns Blood Runs Deep, who also opened for them in 2012.

Before Blood Runs Deep this time though, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, the promoters had booked Scots Stormzone as the night’s openers. The evening really didn’t need a third band anyway, but even moreso it didn’t need a fairly generic power metal band. Unsurprisingly only a small section of the audience, most of whom seemed to already be familiar with the band, were at all interested or responsive to their efforts. Too often London promoters book too many bands under the misapprehension that it offers better value for money, and this is one of those times when they got it completely wrong.

Blood Runs Deep didn’t have much to follow, but have in fact become a greatly improved band in the last two years. Tighter, with better material from new album Into The Void they were much more engaging and energetic than at the Borderline on the last tour. Stylistically they’re actually very similar to APHND, which meant that they went down very well with the crowd, and succeeded in drawing more people in from the bar as well. This was definitely a more successful show than last time, and welcome relief after the ridiculous booking of Stormzone, who did at least appreciate that they shouldn’t have been there, but tried admirably hard anyway.

http://www.jukeboxmetal.com/2014/a-pale-horse-named-death-live-the-underworld-london-2014/