Photos – @photo.amai
Words – @ladylane____
Some metal bills work because the bands sound similar and others work because they don’t.
The PSYCROPTIC and RIVERS OF NIHIL co-headline at Max Watts belonged emphatically to the second category. With Melbourne’s GROWTH and Sydney’s SLAUGHTERCULT opening the night, the bill moved through several shades of extreme metal from psychological heaviness and brutal death-grind through progressive death metal and the surgical technicality that has made PSYCROPTIC one of Australia’s most respected extreme-metal exports.
SLAUGHTERCULT hit the stage with exactly the kind of uncompromising brutality their place on the Psycroptic and Rivers of Nihil bill demanded. The Sydney trio brought a savage blend of brutal death metal and grindcore, delivering crushing riffs, relentless percussion and a filthy, claustrophobic intensity that immediately cut through the room. While the rest of the lineup would explore technical precision, progressive atmosphere and psychological heaviness, Slaughtercult were the blunt instrument of raw, direct and unapologetic violence. Their early position on the bill meant they had the difficult task of winning over a crowd still arriving, but their stripped-back attack needed little introduction or explanation. There was no unnecessary showmanship or overcomplication; the music simply hit hard, with every riff and rhythmic shift reinforcing the band’s reputation for outright extremity.
Melbourne’s own GROWTH were the perfect hometown representatives.
Their psychologically twisted approach to extreme metal gave the opening stages of the evening an ominous quality. Rather than relying purely on speed or technical fireworks, GROWTH builds heaviness through atmosphere and tension, creating something darker and more immersive.
GROWTH’s music has always been about more than simply making extreme metal sound heavy. The band was formed as a creative outlet for brothers Tristan and Nelson Barnes and vocalist LF, with their music exploring trauma, grief, isolation and recovery without romanticising any of it. Under The Under takes that concept into an even more uncomfortable territory, examining what happens after the immediate crisis has passed the fractured, chaotic and often confronting process of trying to rebuild yourself. That emotional weight translated naturally to the live environment, giving their set a sense of tension that separated them from the more straightforward assault of SLAUGHTERCULT. GROWTH allowed their riffs to feel heavy and oppressive, creating an atmosphere that was as important as the individual musicianship.
What makes GROWTH particularly compelling is the contrast between the bleak subject matter and the underlying sense of movement within the music. This isn’t heaviness for heaviness sake. There is a feeling of struggle, uncertainty and eventual forward motion running underneath it, even when the riffs remain crushing and the atmosphere becomes oppressive.
RIVERS OF NIHIL presence changed the scale of the evening.
The Pennsylvania band arrived in Australia on the back of their 2025 self-titled fifth album, a record that expanded their progressive death-metal vocabulary while retaining the crushing weight that initially established their reputation. The album also marked a significant change in the band’s identity, with bassist Adam Biggs taking on lead-vocal duties.
That evolution is important to understanding Rivers of Nihil as a live proposition in 2026. This is not simply a technical death-metal band attempting to reproduce complicated studio arrangements onstage. Their music is increasingly about creating an environment. The riffs can still hit with enormous force, but they are surrounded by atmosphere, melody, progressive structures and unexpected textures. The result is extreme metal that can feel simultaneously massive and strangely spacious.
Live, that contrast gives Rivers of Nihil something the other bands on the bill don’t quite possess. They can make brutality feel beautiful.That is particularly evident in the band’s ability to move from dense death-metal riffing into atmospheric passages without making the transition feel like a genre exercise. Instead, the contrasting elements become part of the same emotional landscape. ‘The Silent Life’, ‘The Sub-Orbital Blues’ and ‘House of Light’ weren’t just songs performed but a performance established further cementing RIVERS OF NIHIL a pillar within the death metal genre.
Their musicianship may be sophisticated, but the underlying physicality remains intact. The low-end weight, aggressive vocals and complex rhythmic structures still hit with the force expected from a death-metal performance. The difference is that RIVERS OF NIHIL give the audience more places to go between those blows.
And then came the band many in the room had ultimately come to see.
PSYCROPTIC don’t need much introduction to an Australian death-metal audience. More than two decades into their career, the Tasmanian band have established a reputation for extraordinary technical precision, rhythmic complexity and a refusal to remain creatively static. Rather than simply celebrating an extensive back catalogue, PSYCROPTIC were presenting the next stage of their evolution.The new material reinforces what the band have always done well while allowing additional shades into the formula. ‘No Blade Of Grass’ combines classic PSYCROPTIC riffing with looser, sludgier passages and a choral/orchestral component – an unusual combination that demonstrates the band’s willingness to stretch their established sound. But none of that experimentation comes at the expense of impact.
PSYCROPTIC live are fundamentally a physical experience further backed up with ‘Enslavement’, ‘Frozen Gaze’ and their finishing masterpiece ‘Carriers of the Plague’. The precision is astonishing, but it never feels like technicality for technicality’s sake. The riffs have momentum. The rhythmic shifts feel designed to knock the audience off balance. Drums, guitars and bass operate almost like interconnected machinery, but the music retains enough groove to prevent it becoming sterile. And then there is Jason Peppiatt. His vocal attack provides the human brutality inside all that instrumental precision. The contrast is one of PSYCROPTIC’s enduring strengths: incredibly intricate music delivered with an almost primal vocal intensity. For a band this technically accomplished, PSYCROPTIC remain remarkably direct.
They don’t need to explain the complexity which is what makes them such a formidable live band after more than two decades. The technical passages aren’t there to demonstrate how difficult the songs are; they’re there because this is how Psycroptic naturally communicate.
Every rhythmic turn matters.
Every stop-start section hits harder.
Every riff feels engineered to create maximum physical impact.
The Melbourne audience therefore received Psycroptic at an especially interesting moment in their career: an established Australian institution presenting new material while continuing to draw on the musical language that made them so influential in the first place.
Huge thanks to the Max Watts Crew, Slaugtercult, Growth, Rivers Of Nihil, Psycroptic and Soundworks Touring for having us!
