Live Review: Karnivool, Northlane

The house is full and there's energy abounding throughout the huge room – though it doesn't yet burst to the surface of the massive audience when Sydney's Northlane hit the stage. Opening with the one-two hit of Genesis into Scarab, the throngs of people remain relatively cautious as the djent-influenced metalcore group shows their style.

Their presence is powerful and musicianship quite spot on – the only element that might not be is the vocals, with Adrian Fitipaldes speaking his way through many parts that are yelled or screamed on their recordings, and the clean parts of Quantum Flux aren't spectacularly accurate. This doesn't stop a small pogo mosh from breaking out during said song, and while the band would have gone off regardless if an audience of this size was their own, this tentative pedestal has put a spotlight on some weaknesses.

Karnivool takes to the stage and move all the notches up to maximum levels. A brief instrumental wash sets the tone before the Perth group cranks into AM War, the first of many atypical songs from their new album, Asymmetry. Before they get too far into that though, the band opts to travel back to 2005 with the title track to their Themata album, which pulls a huge reaction from the more dedicated participants.

Incredible lighting progresses through each song, with differently-themed washes and strobes providing a majestic backdrop to a performance that is seemingly perfect. Every member of Karnivool is the master of their instrument, Ian Kenny's perfect pitch defying the idea of human error, and even the backup vocals and secondary instrumentation from the guitarists can't be faulted.

They save their best Sound Awake hits, like Set Fire To The Hive and New Day, until almost very last, then warming down with the perhaps strangely selected encore of Alpha Omega into Aeons – haunting and soft; it's like the band finally got tired after an hour-and-a-half of rocking it like gods and just wanted to make sure everyone was calm and collected before flooding out into the carpark.