Friday 03/02/06 Soil, American Head Charge, Panic Cell @ The Academy, Manchester

Though predominantly a Soil gig at this metal fest, this certainly wasn’t a case of biding your time for the headliner. It’s rare to see a gig where the support acts are as just as worth waiting for as the headliner. With Panic Cell and American Head Charge supporting Soil it was definitely a triple headliner gig.

London-based Panic Cell kick started the show, and kick would definitely be an appropriate word. There was not one bored face as Panic Cell ripped through the  atmosphere like a switchblade. It’s a rarity to see a metal band giving such a positive and cheerful style to something predominantly dark, delivered by the roarings lyrics of frontman Luke Bell. As Luke Bell and guitarists Harjeet (Hedgey) Virdee and Kelly (Kenji) Downes lined themselves up and rolled us through the motions of what nu-metal should really sound like. Anybody who hadn’t had their ears crunched by this before would have been pleasently suprised. Their old skool looks paired with a refreshing modern style really shook up a cocktail of high musical and technical peformance. They played a varied and well chosen selection of tracks and the - stick in your head like chewing gum on your shoe - rock stomper ‘Save Me’ went down with obvious enjoyment as the crowd surfers and mosh pitters began an explosion of chaos. Panic Cell were on hand to push the detination button. With their new album coming soon it was relieving to know that real talent and loving what you do is able will always live on.

Next up to compliment Panic Cell with more rock offerings were the Minnepolis based industrial metalers American Head Charge.  Everybody held their hands up to receive this downpour of metal rain and let them soak it up in all it’s glory. Technically the band know their stuff and their rapport with each other and the adoring fans really showed that this band (though a little off the wall) were of high calibre and more to the point, the passion and creativity was seething out of their instruments.

Frontman Martin Cock takes off his hat and shouts “At least I know Manchester has my back”, and you couldn’t argue with that. The adoration and clammering bodies and hands thrashed as close to them as they could get. American Head Charge’s latest single ‘Loyalty’ taken from their new album ‘The Feeding’ went down as well as Martin Cock did, as he threw himself off a very speaker into the crowd. How he managed to keep such a strong hold over his voice as he plummeted and bounced back onto the stage with such force we’ll never know, but an acheivement all the same.

Last but not deceased were metal veterans Soil who needed no introduction and didn’t care about giving one as the silence and then total darkness filled the stage before they erupted much to everybody’s delight and went straight into verocious ‘Cross my heart’ and was the perfect taster for the next thrashing forty minutes.

Following on to deep throaty ‘Give It Up’ of which frontman AJ Cavelier delivered with such ferocity and professionalism, reflecting also in the rest of the band giving maximum impact. Classic track  ‘Breaking Me Down’ really got the building pulsating as though AJ Cavelier was really peforming open heart surgery on the desperate for more thronging crowd. AJ’s stature and prescence was domineering and you almost felt you had to salute him as he was definatly calling all the shots.

Though this is Soil’s second lead singer since he replaced Ryan McCombs back in 2004 he gives the band such vibrance and a higher level of seriousness needed to the nature and genre of songs they wish the devil play with. And finishing off with ‘Halo’ was definately a salute to the king of darkness himself.

Photos by: Kelina Cowell