Gig Review: Ignoble @ The Stomach, Palmerston North – 4/09/2026

Some gigs make you settle in for the long haul. A Night of Metal at The Stomach on 4 September was not one of them. Doors opened at 7pm, the first band was playing by 7.30, and the last cymbal crashed well before 10. Four bands, no wasted time: two acts making their live debuts, a long-awaited headliner, and a Wellington band closing things out on pure hardcore adrenaline. Ten dollars on the door, all ages, drug and alcohol free, as always. Loud the entire way through, exactly as advertised.

Edensloh had the unenviable task of opening the night on their first ever show, and for a band only four or so months old they handled it with composure. Fronted by Lorenzo, with Shannon Harris and Trinity Harris trading riffs on guitar, Oliver Campbell on bass and Hayden Ford behind the kit, the band deals in classic metal combined with grimy, industrial-caked sludge and grit ground into the riffs, a sound that wouldn’t feel out of place opening for Ministry.

They eased the room in with two covers rather than diving straight into unfamiliar territory, warming things up with Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell before moving into Metallica’s Creeping Death. It was a smart choice for a debut show: give the crowd something to hold onto before asking them to listen to new songs most in the room hadn’t heard before.

Once they hit their own material, Spitfire, Twisted and 35 Gallons, the pace sharpened considerably: fast, direct, no wasted movement. Lorenzo’s vocals sat perfectly on top of the mix throughout, and the backing vocals layered in nicely, giving the set a fuller sound than most bands could manage on their first outing.

A couple of solos wandered outside their intended key, and the twin Washburn Dimebag Darrell guitars could have used one more tuner pass beforehand, but those are the sort of rough edges that come with a first show. They closed with a medley of Pantera’s Domination and Hollow, which landed with real classic-metal weight and tied the whole set together: covers to open, covers to close, and around twenty minutes of promising original material sitting in between.

Ignoble were the headliners of the night, which made it a curious call that they took the stage second rather than last, a slot usually reserved for the band with nothing left to prove rather than the biggest name on the poster. It barely dented the impact. This was the set most of the room had been waiting for.

Their standing is built on Hollow Thrones & Shattered Crowns, a debut album that, by the band’s own account, is the product of years of songwriting rather than anything rushed. The record’s twin-guitar lines trade off like a conversation in hell, one holding down a menacing, demon-summoning riff while the other winds a melodic flame around it, before the whole thing detonates into full-throttle thrash. That widescreen, cinematic push and pull is what has earned them praise from reviewers, and it was on full display on Friday night.

Standing in on vocals was Josh Hurnen, with guitarist Liam McKnight at times lending a hand. Lead guitarist Brodie Wright, bassist Hamish Marshall and drummer Matt Wright filled out a lineup that went about decimating people’s eardrums with sharp precision.

They opened with Ego’s Reign, a fast, tight start before the song eased into a slower back half. Beneath The Mirror showcased the same dynamic control that made the album a talking point in the first place, Liam’s clean vocal passage working beautifully against Josh’s harsher delivery, before The Nothingness Without built up tension and brought some of the fastest drum fills of the night, the whole band synced in and drawing energy from the crowd.

Cycle of Suffering was where Ignoble hit their most extreme gear, the kind of song where the faster double-kick sections fold into the bassline and become one enormous wall of sound; a tighter mix or bass drum trigger would have helped lock that section in fully, but the intent came through regardless. They closed on A Throne Made Empty, with solos and fills sounding as close to the record as you could possibly get live.

It made for a strange kind of peak: the headline act delivering the night’s highlight reel before the halfway mark, and leaving two more bands to try and follow their outstanding set.

Calling In Silence were billed as a debut performance, the band’s first show anywhere. They had already built a small catalogue on record, breakdown-driven metalcore built for a pit that wants blood, before ever playing live: singles Beyond the Greed and Reaper of Innocence in 2025, followed by the five-track EP Kingdom of Riffs this year. Friday was the first time any of it had been tested in front of a room full of people rather than just on a pair of headphones.

Fronted by Matt Colledge, with Jamie Fleming on lead guitar and Achilles Manley on rhythm, both doubling on backing vocals, Christian Perry on bass and Quin Walker on drums, the band arrived to a crowd already buzzing and ready to mosh hard. Achilles Manley also plays bass for fellow Palmerston North band Imperial Slave, where he’s joined by Ignoble’s Matt Wright on drums, one of many links tying this bill together behind the scenes.

Putrid Stain of Flesh followed an amusing spoken-word opening, before Beyond the Greed landed heavy enough to send half the room into a massive slam. Godkiller hit hardest of the set, and OneXShot arrived relentlessly straight after it, Colledge’s vocals having clearly grown into a range built for this kind of music, not unlike Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos.

Armageddon carried a great backbeat into a breakdown that sent the pit into another frenzy, before they closed on Reaper of Innocence, which leaned harder into death metal, Fleming’s backing vocals working especially well against Colledge’s ferocious lead. For a band making its live debut, this was a genuinely confident set: songs that had only existed online suddenly came alive, teeth bared and ready to tear into flesh.

Marmablade wrapped up the night, having come up from Wellington on the back of numerous live shows and a second-place finish at the 2024 Rockquest Wellington Regional Final. This hardcore band has been pegged as ones to watch for a while now, having spent the past year or so working venues like Thistle Hall, Valhalla and MOON alongside scene stalwarts such as Brainwave, Standover, Cryfor and Ruminari, with one gig listing dubbing them “youth hardcore prodigies”.

Wes Collins fronted the group on the night, with Lucius Rolton and Saxon Knight on guitars, Eli Daly on bass and Matti Volden on drums. On record their sound has been described as atmospheric thrash with a punk backbone and an unexpected touch of Deep Purple, with a reputation for tempos that occasionally outrun the band’s own grip on them. Live, that rawness was there in spades, but it read as urgency rather than a flaw, and from the first note it was clear this was a band coming of age with a resoundingly loud set they knew intimately.

They opened with a brief intro before Two Step, Collins inviting the crowd to do exactly that, with some of the most energetic drumming of the night. Nothing But Foe broke things up with some genuinely inventive break beats, and Luxon dropped into a rap-style breakdown that showed off the band’s range and cheeky punk streak, one of those moments where you could feel them settling into being comfortable on stage.

Killdozer was the most punishing cut of their set, followed by Ode to 04, a nod to the Wellington 04HC scene they have come up through. Fate Decider then rounded things out ahead of Stampede, which in the band’s own words was about “an evil pig”, as punk a way to end a set as exists. Aside from some feedback creeping in during breaks between songs, Marmablade had the cleanest sound of the night, with a tightness to their live set that their videos hadn’t captured.

Four bands, two and a half hours, done and dusted before 10pm: on paper that sounds like a quick, forgettable night. In practice, it was the opposite, and the running order made it a properly unusual one: the headliner played second, and the night built outward rather than toward a single late peak. Edensloh did exactly what an opening act is meant to do; Ignoble delivered the set everyone came to see well ahead of schedule; Calling In Silence used their debut to prove they can translate their recordings onto a stage; and Marmablade closed things out with raw energy that only a dedicated hardcore metal band can bring.

Add in the cross-pollination running underneath it all, and this felt less like four unconnected acts sharing a bill and more like a genuine snapshot of where the lower North Island’s metal scene is at right now. Short and sweet, it may have been, but A Night of Metal at The Stomach definitely earned its name.