Drink, Don't Run: Knife, Slaughterfield & Helluloid Tear Up Shotkickers Shotkickers, Thornbury — July 11, 2026.. 11th July 2026(very,very belated review)

Drink, Don't Run: Knife, Slaughterfield & Helluloid Tear Up Shotkickers Shotkickers, Thornbury — July 11, 2026.. 11th July 2026(very,very belated review)



 




Words by Mark J. Wicked Pics by Dan McKay.


Some shows just have it before a note's even played, and this was one of them. An arvo show, doors at 2:30, three bands that between them cover most of the useful ends of extreme music — and the room was packed for it. There's a very specific kind of energy that happens when a lineup is this varied and this heavy and it lands on a Saturday afternoon: everyone over 30 with a few decades of gigs behind them knows exactly what a sneaky afternoon session with loud music, good beer and better company is worth, and that's exactly what bled through the whole day.

Shotkickers itself deserves its own mention. Best bar staff going around, and the room is built for this — punchy, no mud, the kind of sound that makes a riff actually land instead of just registering. If you haven't caught a show there yet, fix that.


Knife
By Lou Mac (as Mark cannot review his own band,lol)

I like retro sounds, so a lineup that dug this deep into the past was an easy pick — and when Mark asked me to cover the first band, given he's in it, I said yes on the understanding that being credible and genuine is the whole point of doing this in extreme music.




The band in question — call them the logical endpoint of industrial death-crust — welded Nailbomb's industrial thrash violence, Godflesh's concrete-slab weight, early Fear Factory's cybernetic precision and early Pitchshifter's mechanical grind into a single war machine (they even have a song of that name), then doused it all in Bolt Thrower's tank-tread death metal, Napalm Death's grind assault and the filthy d-beat snarl of early UK crust.




The caveman riffs hit with that unmistakable Bolt Thrower lumber — thick, martial, almost marching — filtered through Godflesh's industrial compression. Drums sat in that space between programmed and human, machine-gun precision that still swung with Napalm Death urgency, and when the d-beat sections kicked in the crust influence became impossible to ignore: raw, snotty, anarcho-punk filth dragged through a scrapyard and given a death metal throat. Vocals landed somewhere between a Godflesh bellow and a hoarse crust shout — someone screaming through a rusted megaphone while the factory collapses around them. The mid-set stretch was particularly devastating, a crushing mid-tempo run of pure war-is-hell atmosphere before it exploded into grind chaos, and the crowd — punks, alternative music weirdos and thrash/death-metal lifers alike — answered with that half-mosh, half-sway that only happens when the music is both crushing and hypnotic.







The live mix leaned into the filth rather than fighting it — guitars thick and abrasive, bass a concrete slab, the electronic and industrial accents cutting through clean even without a live drummer behind them. Still nasty, still unhinged, still physical and dangerous, with the crust-punk DNA keeping any industrial coldness at bay. They closed with a stellar Godflesh cover of "Like Rats" into a final stretch that felt like Nailbomb and Napalm Death fighting over the same war zone, leaving the room ringing and slightly shell-shocked. Not pretty music, not clever in the modern-metal sense — industrial machinery, trench warfare and anarcho-punk rage compressed into one hostile, physical experience. Go see them while the machines are still running hot.
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Slaughterfield

Next up, the ever-rising metal magic machine that is Slaughterfield. Think old-school thrash in the vein of Kreator, Possessed, Sodom and Dark Angel, run through solid influences from Morbid Angel, Sadus, Master and even Morbid Saint. On paper, this is a young band, three shows deep by this point, but nothing about them plays like it. 






That's because the four of them have been paying dues in the Melbourne underground for years across outfits like Counter Attack, Thrillkillers, Maniaxe and Dire Blaze, and it shows in every riff — this is a unit that sounds road-tested because, in every way that matters, it already is.



They've captured the imagination from the get-go with only a handful of gigs down, and watching them live it's obvious why. The aesthetic is dialled in, the tone is exactly right, and the musicianship is mind-boggling for a band this fresh. Nine tracks are apparently already in the can, recorded and mastered with Jason at Goatsound, and once that record's out there, this lineup is going to look like an absolute steal in hindsight. Right now all you can get your hands on is the Goatsound demo on Bandcamp, and that's criminal given what they're doing on a stage. 


Every band on this bill was an experienced player working a different tangent of underground music, and Slaughterfield's tangent is the purest old-school tribute of the three — thick, riff-forward, built on Teutonic thrash violence and primordial death metal weight, delivered by players who clearly know exactly which parts of their record collections are worth stealing. 








Big future with this band, and I don't say that lightly.
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Helluloid

Helluloid closed out the afternoon with their horror-obsessed thrash, built on the same definitive death metal and hardcore foundation as Slaughterfield, and they did it as an actual debut gig — this was the first time these songs had ever been played live in front of a room. You wouldn't have picked it. Formed out of the ashes of Anarazel in 2025 with a debut LP already out (Slash Metal, which we reviewed here), this is a band built entirely from scene veterans who understood exactly what they were doing before they ever booked a show.




The horror concept translates live better than you'd expect from a gimmick this specific — every song built as tribute to a different film, the whole record structured like its own taxonomy of fear, and none of it read as novelty once it was actually happening in the room. 


What set them apart from the other two supports is the same thing that set all three apart: years of experience playing in other bands behind them, which is exactly why a debut show could sound this assured. Killer, frankly magnificent musicianship, entertaining and pisstaking between-song banter, real showmanship, and heavy as fuck music throughout.


They moved merch faster than anyone on the bill, no surprise given how sensational the record already is, and the whole album sounded even better live than it does online — tighter, meaner, and with a lot more menace in the room than a pair of headphones can give you. Best debut show I reckon I've seen, and these guys weren't playing around. One for the history books.



Three bands, one arvo, zero mercy — and an afternoon that's going to get talked about for a long time yet. Utter classic show.






The rumour is that Slaughterfield have linked with a label and the album will be dropping this year!!!!!

ALL THE LINKS BECAUSE YOU SHOULD SUPPORT BANDS BY BUYING MERCH/MUSIC AND ATTENDING SHOWS:

HELLULOID:





SLAUGHTERFIELD:




KNIFE:






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