As DEVILOOF walked on, frontman Keisuke immediately called for a wall of death before ‘GouZinZanGoku’ even got properly underway. The room split, the track dropped, and within seconds Downstairs at the Dome turned into a churn of boots and bodies. For a London debut that’s been years in the making, following a run of false starts that kept them off European stages, the turnout was modest and the venue felt noticeably under capacity. Still, the people who did show up came ready to move.
The crowd underlined where DEVILOOF sit in 2025. Burly metalheads in worn battle vests clashed shoulders with girls in full lolita fits and platform shoes. Musically, DEVILOOF sit closer to deathcore and slam than most “visual kei metal” tags suggest, even if the presentation pulls hard from that world. ‘GouZinZanGoku’, in particular, has been a gateway track outside Japan for years, with its video traveling far enough online to put them on the radar of people who’d otherwise never go near the scene.
‘Newspeak’ followed with hard stops and sudden drops, threading Japanese tonal motifs through riffs that add atmosphere to the madness. It’s the same direction seeded through albums ‘ONI’ and ‘DYSTOPIA’, then pushed again on 2025’s ‘INSHU’, a technical exercise in extremity built on whirlwind drumming, constant tempo shifts, and squeals pushed right to the edge.
All night, Keisuke’s vocals were the main focal point; pig squeals, deep gutturals, high-pitch screeches, and brief melodic passages, switching on a dime. In a room this size, there was nowhere for the vocals to hide, and they landed just as they do on record. When the band stepped into more melodic territory like ‘Aishitekudasai’ and ‘False Self’, it slotted naturally into a set built on contrast.
Drummer Kanta was mostly a silhouette behind thick backlighting and fog, but every kick and snare ripped through the PA and straight into the sternum. With his departure announced prior to the tour, this being his first and last London show gave the performance a you only get one shot energy, even if the room didn’t stop moving long enough to sentimentalise it.
At one point, Keisuke brought three people up from the front, lined them up at the edge of the stage and told them to “fly” when the next track kicked in. ‘Natural Born Killer’ and ‘ESCAPE’ immediately pushed the room back into full collision mode, both built around relentless pacing and riffs that don’t give the pit time to reset, even as the set moved across different eras of the band’s catalogue.
DEVILOOF closed the night with an encore aimed at long-time fans. 2016’s ‘Ruin’, first released at the very start of their career, is still as fast and ugly as ever, stripped-back in a way that leaves no room for anything but speed. ‘DESTINATION’ finished on a simpler, chant-friendly note, as the floor opened for one last wall of death and circle pit. DEVILOOF wrung everything they could out of the room.
There’s a wider context that makes the turnout frustrating. This is the band that broke out early online, reached Wacken’s Metal Battle finals within a year of forming, topped Japan’s metal charts with ‘DYSTOPIA’, moved to a major label, and finally put boots on the ground in Europe after years of false starts. They’ve built a genuine international presence without sanding the edges off to make it easier to sell. If London judged them solely by the size of the crowd, it would miss the point. The performance itself was the proof.
Photos by Charles Shepherd
DEVILOOF
INSHU
Release Date: 29/01/2025
Label: Tokuma Japan Communications
Stream: Spotify | Apple Music
