What a difference a couple of months makes to a new band. The last time Bullet For My Valentine played Cardiff they had an eponymous mini album and although their much-vaunted live performances were growing in considerable stature no one quite expected them to be as colossal a metal force so soon.
The band members that make up BFMV would have you believe otherwise. Their unique journey has been memorably catalogued in over seven years from playing pokey clubs in the South Wales valleys to sharing a stage with heroes Iron Maiden at the Reading Festival earlier this year.
A sell-out crowd at the Coal Exchange contrasted between the predominantly adolescent and glum-faced to the older, more nostalgic metal traditionalists. The band arrived on stage full of startling self-belief and front man Matthew Tuck was so wide-eyed in appreciation it almost lit the crowd’s gloomy spirit.
Opening gambit 'Cries In Vain' was effervescent with classic British metal and at its core and a ferocious riff that instantly mangled young bodies together in an oven baked mosh pit.
The malevolence and distaste continued with recent single 'Suffocating Under Words Of Sorrow (What Can I Do)', a dual vocal mix that arranged itself between the sweetly melodic and raucously incandescent. '4 Words' had Tuck at his metal pin-up best. The guitar shapes were fashionably angular with the aesthetic to re-inventing the popular metal zeitgeist to a new generation of hysteric fans. The set briefly found time to slow down and Tuck dedicated 'Tears Don't Fall' to all the lovers out there. Any lovers who took Tuck up on his offer to cavort during the rumbling anthem would have endured an ear-splitting onslaught of shouty vocals and cantankerous guitar solos.
The set drew to a close with the infamous 'Hand Of Blood' - an obvious crowd favourite and a song that began the ongoing domino effect to success for BFMV. Once the band complete their current UK tour they will travel stateside to support the pleasantly named It Dies Today. Triumph over constant adversity has never sounded so brilliantly realised.
