For a band that have been doing the rounds for the best part of 15 years it is hard to believe that it has taken Bossk this long to do an extensive headline tour of the UK.
Having shared the stage with the likes of Cult Of Luna, The Hope Conspiracy and Baroness, the post-metal outfit aren’t exactly strangers to life on tour, but after supporting such acts it seems only fitting that with their critically acclaimed 2021 release Migration the six piece finally get to introduce their new material as the main attraction.
It’s Edinburgh’s Dvne who fill the support role, an act who also released a cracking record last year in Etemen Aenka. The (now) quintet use their brand of titanic heaviness to take the listener on a journey through the complex narrative they have created in their music. Even though there is a lot to take in with all the different textures to their sound, the band themselves seem to effortlessly slip between melodic tones and crushing heavy riffs. It’s this juxtaposition of melody and aggression that is most attention grabbing, the two different guitar lines really complimenting each other along with the clean vocals versus the intense screams. Everything that Dvne do is so well thought out, even down to the way the lights accentuate certain beats to really lift the live experience.
Though Dvne clearly won some new fans this evening, this is Bossk’s show. Lighting incense around the stage to set the atmosphere before the band steps on stage, it shows that like their tour mates, Bossk have thought of everything they want their live experience to be.
For the majority of their existence as a band Bossk were predominantly an instrumental band, with very limited sprinkles of vocals. However, now with a full-time vocalist in the band there’s a new element to what they do. The danger of bringing in a vocalist to an already established act like theirs is that it could have completely changed the dynamic and put them in a lane already occupied by a lot of other metal bands, but the rawness of the live vocals only emphasises their ability to lift the expansive instrumentation that we’re already accustomed to hearing from the band.
Bossk open the set with enigmatic Migration opener ‘White Stork’ before launching into fan favourite ‘Kobe’. Whilst it is hard to say that they have a hit song, it’s a track that effortlessly lifts the energy.
The post-metallers still give themselves plenty of room to demonstrate how well they can build an atmosphere, executing the quiet-and-delicate to loud-and-crushing template with aplomb on the likes of ‘Heliopause’ and ‘Define’.
Even though they have been around since 2005, this tour will most definitely put more eyes on Bossk and any love they garner off its back is well deserved.
Images and words by Tim Birkbeck, edited by Abi Coulson
