Credit: Found On Internet

The UK metal scene has been like the Scary Movie franchise for much of the 21st Century. It’s a piss-take of a piss-take, it's been twice removed from originality, and three times removed from anything remotely approaching talent.
 
When the "scene" (an infection of a term, as it rightly describes a group of bands with no new ideas between them and talent so lacking that they're too shit to get a decent deal and escape their home town) languishing in the hands of Funeral For A Friend, Lostprophets, Bullet For My Valentine, and even guff like Dragonforce (for Slippery Fuck's sake, it is powermetal and it sounded old in the 80s - Get. Over. It!), bands like The Defiled need our support.

Opening with “Mindset”, The Defiled hits you like a Chieftain tank to the face.

Scratch that – it’s like being hit in the face by a Chieftain tank that’s been set on fire. With napalm.
 
With a few electronic loops slipped in by their programmer, The AVD, this is skull-stomping metal with just the right amount of industrial twist. Frontman Stitch can scream, roar and (hush there at the back) even sing pretty damn well when required, and with the wall of assault laid on by guitarist and bass players Taint and Drex Exel, this is like a British Chimaira mixed with the tech-literate noise of early American Head Charge.
 
And Christ, they've remembered what Being In A Band means. The don't look like a bunch of blokes who've got up on stage to knock out half-a-dozen shitty songs they made up in their garage. They look like A Band. They don't stand around looking like a bunch of chancers, desperate for audience approval. They fight and demand the audience earns their approval.
 
Closing with “Red Tape”, the aural equivalent of having the side of your head solidly banged against a concrete wall, it's hard to understand why the UK scene has deadened its nerves to stuff like this.
 
The same cannot be said for Murdermile. A reformation of the band made up of the ashes of the sadly-deceased Cheese Cake Truck, like the rest of UK metal they seem to be two steps removed from where they should be. And…it's just trying too hard. Coming on stage with painted faces, and led by the embarrassingly named Yoko Homo - oh, I bet they spent all of 10 minutes coming up with that witticism - wearing a suit and the kind of make-up that KISS would think looks cheap, they’re everything you wouldn’t want to sit through on Easter Sunday.
 
Guitar player Chriz couldn't look less in love with gimmick if he was divorcing it and was contesting the will.