Live Review: Nails, Heriot and Pupil Slicer | Electric, Bristol | 26.03.2026
Nails, Heriot and Pupil Slicer all under one roof? It goes without saying that this was a violent one.
Pupil Slicer
Tonight’s promoter must have been feeling a touch lucky when they booked Pupil Slicer to open. Whilst the band are filled with nothing but the loveliest of humans and their discography is (mostly) fantastic, Slicer’s live performances can be bit, well, hit and miss, to say the very least. In fact, catching one of their sets can feel like rolling a dice; both punters and the band alike can only hope they land a nat 20. Do they manage it tonight? More or less.
Displaying a level of assertiveness as they storm from material from last year’s Fleshwork, the London mathcore yob are genuinely great tonight, especially with Kate Davies sounding on top form and legitimately passionate. But what makes this set just so strong, especially in contrast to some of their more dare say dicey shows in the past, is the level of confidence they radiate tonight. They may be opening for Nails in a 1000+ cap room filled with folk who may not be familiar with their approach to frantic punishment, but clearly such a feat hasn’t knocked their psyche in the slightest. Instead, they’re bold and assured, something that ensures the celestial punishment of ‘Momentary Actuality’ and the lacerating ‘Wounds Upon My Skin’ to cut more deeply tonight. There’s no denying Pupil Slicer are rolling high this evening.
Photo Credit: Rowan Bruce
Heirot
As for Heriot, they’ve essentially become a band renowned for being nothing but brilliant live. Tonight doesn’t challenge that. Playing more or less a home town show and sounding legitimately malicious, as the heavyweights plow through ‘Siege Lord’ with the kind of intent typically only reserved for old norse berserkers, the population of Electric mirror such intensity by happily waging war on each other in the pit. In true Heriot fashion, this is 30 minutes of bludgeoning violence in the most ignorant form possible, a display of musical aggression void of the cheap gimmicks that litter the heavy music landscape.
Even with a large portion of tonight’s attendance clearly having seen this band previously, there’s a level of awe in the room that’s reminiscent of a large crowd being utterly shocked by a new experience that’s just so devastating. That’s the impact that Heriot has a live entity, and as the band close their set, it’s hard to decide what’s more visceral; the sheer damage being caused during ‘At The Fortress Gate’ or the parable sexual tension between the two steppers and battlejacket-donned push-pitters going at it in the pit.
Photo Credit: Rowan Bruce
Nails
Nails have long been dubbed by some as one of the most violent bands on Earth. Whilst it’s agreeable that such a statement is hyperbolic in nature, it’s hard to disagree with such a sentiment when watching them live. Ultimately and as a result, the most apt way to review tonight’s headliners via the written word would be to take whatever device you’re writing on, ball it in your first, lamp the person next to you and then publish whatever gibberish is in your word processor after that. This is the kind of performance you can’t help but laugh during due to just how daftly intense it all is, and tonight Nails add an extra level of meaning to the classic idiom of such things being absurdly hard.
Opening this one-off headliner by blasting through an opening gambit of ‘Suffering Soul’ ‘Lacking The Ability To Process Empathy’ and ‘Conform’ with so much haste it feels like a song a second, every aspect about this performance feels like it’s being pushed to it’s utter limit. The bellows of frontman Todd Jones are delivered with so much force you can almost see his thorax trying to burst from his throat. The tube amps flanking the stage seem to vibrate to the point where they threaten to disintegrate. Front of house look like they’re ready to conduct their jobs with fire extinguishers should the mixing desk combust. The push-pitters and slam dancers forgo their differences in favour of just wailing on each other, lost in the haste, intensity and ever escalating cycle of extremity.
It’s breathless in every sense of the word; there’s no respite to even catch a lung-full of air, and genuinely, it’s the kind of set where you can symphaise with the actions of crowd-killers. But despite this musical and very real melee occupying the majority of space within the Electric, there’s an air of catharsis – even joy – present. Be it the crooked smirks of dancers enjoying the thrall of consensual violence, the grinning albeit clenched jaws of attendees enduring the intensity or even Jones clearly enjoying this set despite his intimating stature, this set feels like an outpouring of collective joy expressed in the most malicious way possible.
Come the end of ‘Unsilent Death’, where there’s nothing but laughs and long overdue breaths are taken, it’s impossible not to physically see such a sentiment made true. Nails may not be the most constantly present act, which isn’t surprising given there’s no way any act can maintain a level of intensity this extreme. But should there be any take away from tonight, it’s that this act remain both one of the world’s most intense and strangely cathartic acts in the greater world of extreme music.
Photo Credit: Rowan Bruce