Live Review: Couch Slut and Death Goals | Downstairs At The Dome, London | 26/06/2025
Hitting the UK for the first time, hardcore noise rockers Couch Slut hit The Dome, supported by scene favourites Death Goals.
Death Goals
Since 2023’s A Garden of Dead Flowers, Death Goals have been a constant presence in the weirder side of London’s hardcore scene. Being the more hardcore of the two acts this night (Couch Slut are not the band for windmill kicks) is always a harder sell, but with the set list leaning on some of the noisier & doomier tracks from debut The Horrible And The Miserable, such as ‘Shrike’ and ‘Misery’, Death Goals fit like a glove. As the set went on, faster tracks like ‘Last Night I Had A Dream About Death’ were interspersed with calls of trans rights and Free Palestine. With the set opening with an upcoming new song, their mixture of chaos and beat down doesn’t seem to be changing.
Photo Credit: Sarah Tsang
Couch Slut
Couch Slut are a crushingly loud band. Unlike openers Death Goals, there was no chance for a mosh pit, with each kick drum beat pounding through the chest, and the snare fighting through the opening layers of feedback. A set list largely consisting of 2024 album You Could Do It Tonight, the hypnotic & loopy yet hardcore & noisy riffs filled every space in the room. Delivering ‘The Donkey’ halfway through the set, it really hammered home the darkness that Couch Slut surround their music in. The spoken word outro lingered on, and seeing vocalist Megan Osztrosits layer more details on top of it pushed the uncomfortable narrative of drugs and masochism.
This gig was in the middle of a run of EU festival dates, so the set was a bit shorter than you’d expect for a band’s first show in the UK (especially as a headline). There was a high level of dissatisfaction shown to the Brexit legislation requiring bands to get “work” visas, with the cost having prevented them from coming here sooner, it may be a while before they come back.
Ending the set with some songs from 2020s Take A Chance On Rock ‘n’ Roll (including ‘Topless and Bottomless’, introduced as their only fun song), and ending with the creepy ‘Laughing and Crying’ and the depressingly dark ‘The Stupid Man’, Couch Slut showed themselves as a crushing live presence that stares into the darkness.
Photo Credit: Sarah Tsang