MOTIONLESS IN WHITE + FIT FOR A KING + BRAND OF SACRIFICE @ O2 ACADEMY, BRIXTON 22-02-2025
Brand Of Sacrifice are as extreme as the name implies – what at first appears to be a wall of sound, as the audience listens, reveals itself to be much more textured than at first glance. As far as openers go, it’s an awesome way to start. Immediately opening you up to intensity – doing more than just warming you up, instead dropping you right into it.
The set opens with a recording describing how the audience is now—as the name suggests—a sacrifice. Frontman Kyle Anderson is a commanding presence, and when he asks the audience to start a circle pit to surf, it’s no surprise that everyone rushes to comply.
The band are inspired by the Japanese manga series Berserk, and once you know that, the pummelling energy of both the drums and guitar, along with Anderson’s almost otherworldly harpy-esque screams, perfectly click into place with the unforgiving aesthetic plane of the series.
From a personal perspective, the band’s aesthetics also bring to mind something akin to an adventure story—there’s something very Pirates of the Caribbean about it. There’s a sense, in particular, of waves—tonally and visually—aided by each member’s movements, especially the way they flick their hair whilst playing.
As the set begins to draw to a close, the audio—and thus the band itself—implores us to remember we have ‘one lifetime on this earth.’ You really do feel like you have gone through a baptism of fire—and come out the other side better for it, re-energised.
Fit for a king may be a less extreme affair, but are just as exciting to watch. Fronted by Ryan Kirby, another extremely charismatic person, they use clean and unclean vocals to great impact. All suited up in full black outfits, they feel like a gang of sorts, one that Kirby lets us into by inviting us in, asking the audience to help him out if we know the words, call and response to their song Backbreaker and asking us to raise our hands along to the music towards the end of the set.
This effect is heightened by the act of thanking everyone in the room for any inclusion they have had in the evening – including the people holding up crowd surfers (which there is a healthy amount of), which I thought was a nice addition; I haven’t heard that often before.
Even before the Motionless in White set begins, there’s an obvious sense of love and joy from the audience. Whoever made the pre-set playlist has clearly been paying attention to their audience because everyone is having a great time singing along to the music and laughing together. This becomes even more evident as the set gets going, the warmth now not just from the atmosphere itself but also from the pyro on stage.
There’s a lot going on with the staging, even before you get to processing the members of the band themselves. The aforementioned pyro, as well as the Cherry Bombs – a self described girl gang that are at turns either performing choreography, dancing with or shooting fire, spraying the audience with water and waving flags. At times it almost verges on too much, overwhelming in how much there is to look at and it should feel extremely tacky – a harkening back to the uncomfortable vibes of LA hair metal. However – amongst all of that and also his bandmates clad in both masks and joker-esque face paint – Chris ‘Motionless’ Cerulli is at the centre of all of that, cutting an extreme suave and simple figure. Something about that juxtaposition brings the whole thing back down to reality and makes it feel instead like a really fun show. Almost as if showing these ideas to the reviewer and wryly raising its eyebrows at us.
It helps that the songs are great, too. Not only are they performed flawlessly – even songs that haven’t been dusted off for years (namely ‘Disguise’) sound great and fit right in with the modern songs of the set – but they are clearly all crowd-pleasers. Wherever you stand in the venue, each song is met with an enthusiastic cheer. There is, however, a moment for the uninitiated, too; Cerulli explains how they like to have a moment in the set everyone can sing along to – another call-and-response moment of the evening.
Each night of the tour, Cerulli tells us, has a unique song on the setlist. He teases us that since we already got an extra song, they aren’t going to do it here, but in the end, he tells us they are all having such a good time, and they will. This sort of teasing, along with their disbelief at having sold out Brixton – when they have struggled in the past to sell out The Forum – as well as the band having Anderson and Kirby return to the stage to join them for Reincarnate and Slaughterhouse (and Cerulli doing a whole speech about how much they loved Brand of Sacrifice and having them on tour – ‘never has [he] been so happy to sound so bad [alongside Anderson]’) adds to the feeling of community that has been fostered throughout the entire night. Thus, a set which, on the face of it, harkens back to the superficiality of times gone by instead reveals itself to have a lovely depth to it.
WORDS: ELOISE LANE PHOTOS: ETHNE LEVER
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All photos © Ethne Lever
