A sweaty crowd suitably warmed up by our local Gravemind and Brisbane’s legendary death metal stalwarts Disentomb packed into 170 Russell when right on cue, the band everyone was here to see – New Jersey’s Lorna Shore – hit the stage. They launched into ‘Oblivion’ from their two-month old album ‘I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me’ and it was on.
80 minutes or so of face-ripping sonic armageddon lifted entirely from their last two albums and the ‘…And I Return To Nothingness’ EP that debuted current singer Will Ramos to the fans in 2021 was to follow.
‘Unbreakable’ saw fists in the air to the life-affirming chorus, and ‘Sun//Eater’ took us back to their 2022 album ‘Pain Remains’ helped along by Disentomb growler-in-chief Jordan James Phillip trading lines with Ramos while the machine precision of the band drills wave after wave of pure brutal energy into the fixated crowd.
A pseudo-encore takes place as the band step off stage for barely a minute after the closest thing these guys have to a power ballad (‘Glenwood’) gives us all some semblance of a breather, before the first single from the last album ‘Prison of Flesh’ took us from savage verses to melodic choruses (“I am fading… faster… searching for answers in the dark… until I depaaaaaaaaaaaart!”) to the heaviest breakdown you’ll ever hear.
It’s worth pausing here to reflect on ‘Prison of Flesh’. It’s not news that drummer Austin Archey is a powerhouse. The jaw-dropping speed at which his limbs blur around the kit is unparalleled, but his sense of melody is rarely mentioned. Go and listen back to the chorus of ‘Prison of Flesh’ as he switches blast beat to a half time groove littered with fills constantly driving the song in a way that reminds me of Terry Bozzio playing in The Mothers of Invention generations before and a musical world away. To pull it off live night after night and not miss a beat is crazy.
Into ‘To The Hellfire’. Blast beats, heavy breakdowns that see the five members change tempo and time signatures in the blink of an eye and that voice and a fan favourite that couldn’t be omitted.
A lot is said of Ramos’ vocals and Archey’s drums – and with good reason – but they’re not alone on stage. A shout-out to lead guitarist Adam De Micco’s thrash-inspired shredding on his fluorescent sunburst axe, Andrew O’Connor keeping him in check with impeccable rhythm guitar and Michael Yager crushing that bass with arpeggios that would be impressive on a guitar.
The band leaves only to come back for their three-piece metal-opera: parts one, two and three of ‘Pain Remains’ from the album of the same name and like that, it was over.
I’m old enough to have seen a lot of bands that influenced Lorna Shore in their prime, and even old enough to have seen some of the bands that influenced them. A lot of people my age hang shit on deathcore and the genre’s poster-boys who we saw tonight, but not me. Lorna Shore wear their influences on their sleeve and build on them. They have created something new and they’re damn good at doing it. I’ll be going to their gigs long into senility if I have anything to do with it.
The full set list for Lorna Shore at 170 Russell, Melbourne on December 3, 2025 was:
Oblivion
Unbreakable
Sun//Eater
Cursed to Die
Into The Earth
Glenwood
Prison of Flesh
To the Hellfire
Pain Remains I: Dancing Like Flames
Pain Remains II: After All I’ve Done, I’ll Disappear
Pain Remains III: In a Sea of Fire
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