There are gigs where you stand at the back, have a few beers, nod along and go home. Then there are gigs where, somewhere between the first note and the final blast of feedback, you realise you’ve made a terrible mistake wearing a relatively clean T-shirt.
Soulfly and Nailbomb at London’s Electric Ballroom was very much the latter.
Thirty years after “Point Blank” introduced the world to Nailbomb’s wonderfully pissed-off collision of industrial metal, hardcore, thrash and electronic noise, Max Cavalera finally brought the project to the UK.
And rather than simply giving Nailbomb their own nostalgic victory lap, Cavalera has paired them with Soulfly for a double dose of everything that has made his career so gloriously unrestrained.
The Tribal Technology tour arrived in Camden with a sense of occasion, but inside the Ballroom there was little interest in standing around politely appreciating history. This was a metal show & London has come prepared to behave accordingly.
When Nailbomb walks onto the stage, there is a strange sense that everyone is waiting to see whether something recorded three decades ago can still sound dangerous. The answer arrives almost immediately.
“Wasting Away” doesn’t so much start as it fucking detonates.
The room erupts, bodies slam forward, fists appear above heads, and suddenly the space between the stage and the back of the Ballroom becomes a swirling mass of movement. The sound is brutally physical, guitars grinding against programmed electronics while Cavalera’s vocals cut through the mess with that unmistakable mixture of rage and contempt.
There is no warm-up. No gentle introduction.
“Vai Toma No Cú” follows and the crowd gets even uglier. There is something wonderfully chaotic about watching people who have spent the last 30 years listening to “Point Blank” finally getting the opportunity to scream these songs back at Cavalera.
“24 Hour Bullshit” is greeted like an old friend who has arrived specifically to start a fight. The Nailbomb set is essentially one long downward spiral.
“Guerrillas” pounds forward with a mechanical precision that contrasts beautifully with the increasingly chaotic pit. At the front, people are bouncing off each other like pinballs. Further back, heads are banging in unison, while those standing on the edges watch the carnage unfold with expressions somewhere between amusement and self-preservation.
Then comes “Sum of Your Achievements”. The riffs are filthy.
The electronics sound like machinery malfunctioning in a factory that should have been condemned years ago. And the crowd responds by getting even louder.
“Blind and Lost” keeps the pressure on before “Cockroaches” arrives and completely destroys whatever remains of the room’s personal-space policy.
This is the moment where Nailbomb stops feeling like a reunion and starts feeling genuinely dangerous.
Cavalera & co look completely at home amid the noise. There is no sense that he’s simply ticking off songs from a setlist. Max & Igor snarl, prowl and throw themselves into the performance, feeding off the reaction in front of them. The audience, meanwhile, are giving everything back.
“World of Shit” is appropriately savage, followed by “Religious Cancer”, which sounds every bit as hostile as its title suggests. Then comes “Shit Piñata”. Yes, that song.
And somehow the room manages to become even more chaotic. The final assault comes with “Sick Life”.
Forty-five minutes. Eleven songs. One legendary album finally given the live treatment it has been denied in Britain for three decades.
Nailbomb disappears from the stage, leaving behind ringing ears, sweat dripping from the ceiling and a crowd that looks like it has just been involved in a minor industrial accident.
And we’re only halfway through.
If Nailbomb is the sound of a machine tearing itself apart, Soulfly is the sound of somebody feeding that machine directly into a volcano.
The lights drop. The anticipation becomes almost tangible. Then the opening riff of “Back to the Primitive” hits.
The response is immediate. The entire Ballroom seems to jump.
There are hands everywhere. People are shouting every word. The pit opens, closes and opens again as bodies crash into one another, while at the front the barrier is taking an absolute beating.
Max doesn’t need to say much. He doesn’t have to. That riff does the talking.
“Seek ‘n’ Strike” keeps the momentum at full speed before “No Hope = No Fear” takes things back to the early Soulfly years.
This is where the band’s longevity becomes obvious.
These aren’t songs being performed for the sake of nostalgia. They still work. They still make people move. And Soulfly are clearly having a fucking great time playing them.
“Prophecy” brings another huge response, with the audience screaming back the chorus while the band hammer through the song with considerably more aggression than you might expect from musicians who have been doing this for decades.
“No Pain = No Power” follows, before “Fire” and “Bring It” turn the floor into complete chaos.
Max repeatedly moves toward the edge of the stage, encouraging the crowd rather than simply performing at them. Every gesture seems to produce another surge from the audience. Then comes one of the evening’s coolest moments.
“Tribe / Umbabarauma”. The Brazilian influence that has always been woven through Soulfly suddenly becomes impossible to ignore. The atmosphere changes; the groove takes over, and the entire room seems to move as one rather than simply throwing itself around. It’s tribal, hypnotic and enormous.
“I and I” brings the aggression straight back, before “Downstroy” lands with the subtlety of a wrecking ball. There is a point during the song where the pit appears to consume almost the entire floor. From the balcony, it looks ridiculous. From inside it, it must have felt fucking brilliant.
Then Soulfly starts digging deeper. “Berimbau”, “Chama”, “Bumba”. “Favela/Dystopia”, all BANGERS!
The Brazilian percussion and tribal rhythms give the set a character that sets Soulfly apart from so many bands that emerged from the same late-’90s/early-’00s metal landscape. This isn’t simply groove metal with some percussion thrown over the top. There is a genuine rhythmic identity running through the music, and London responds to it.
By now the room is drenched in sweat & shirts are stuck to backs. Hair is plastered across faces. People are leaning against the walls trying to recover before throwing themselves back into the crowd.
Nobody wants to leave the pit. Nobody wants to miss anything. Then comes “Jumpdafuckup”. You can probably imagine what happens next.
The song’s title becomes an instruction. The floor goes completely mental.
And when the opening of “Eye for an Eye” finally arrives, there is a sense that the evening has reached its inevitable conclusion.
Fists rise. Voices become one. Cavalera stands at the front of the stage and takes it all in before launching into the final assault.
For a musician whose career stretches back to the earliest days of Sepultura, there is something pretty fucking impressive about watching Max Cavalera still commanding a room like this.
The final notes ring out. The crowd roars.
And for a moment there is that strange post-gig silence where everyone looks around as if trying to work out exactly what the hell just happened.
The clever thing about this tour is that it isn’t simply trading on nostalgia.
Of course there is nostalgia. You’d be an idiot to pretend otherwise.
Seeing Nailbomb finally play the UK after 30 years is a genuine event. But nostalgia alone doesn’t produce a violent pit. It doesn’t make people scream until they have nothing left. It doesn’t make songs recorded in another era sound like they were written specifically to destroy a Camden nightclub in 2026. That’s the real achievement tonight.
Review: Joseph Mitchell
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