South of Salem – Hot as Hell, it’s the Death of the Party!
Camden Underworld – April 4 2025
It was an unusually warm early April day in London, and the temperature in the sold out Camden Underworld was already ramping up.
I was looking forward to seeing London funk-metallers, In Search Of Sun and had been listening to their latest album, 2024’s Lemon Amigos, quite a bit recently. However, I was happily surprised to find that their live-sound is a considerably beefier affair than that recorded on ‘vinyl’. Standing-in for their regular guitarist, Rory Kay was Quentin ‘Quiny’ Lucien who did a stellar job, and as far as I, the humble onlooker, was concerned, didn’t put a foot wrong all night.
Kicking off with Mega Piranha from 2017’s Virginia Funk Mother album, the band played a selection of tracks from all three of their albums throughout the night and closed their set with Bad Girl.
They played a great show and frontman Adam Leader, did a good job keeping the energy in the room high and bouncy, I think it’s fair to say that they made a few new friends in the crowd at the Underworld.
High Parasite, a band that I had never heard of prior to tonight, were the next to hit the stage. With painted faces and a great stage presence they had a punchy goth rock sound, at times verging on something similar to late century doom metal, I’m sure influenced by Aaron Stainthorpe, (yep, the same Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride fame).
Playing a selection from their only current release, 2024’s Forever We Burn, High Parasite put on a polished performance with Stainthorpe prowling the stage while guitarists Sam Hill and Jonny Hunter, along with bassist Tombs and Dan Brown on drums kept things heavy!
If you are a lover of that genre we call doom, then get yourself along to a High Parasite gig soon, you won’t be disappointed.
By now the Underworld was starting to feel like a furnace, it seemed like the entire population of Camden had squeezed into the 500 capacity Venue as the intro tape kicked into action and Joey, Kodi, Denis, Dee and James took to the stage to great cheers from the South of Salem faithful that were eagerly awaiting the show.
Opening up with the anthemic singalong Let Us Prey from 2020’s The Sinner Takes It All album, South of Salem remind us just how good their songs have always been. To The Moon and Back then follows, a nicely rocked-up Savage Garden cover and then straight into another South of Salem classic (can you have classics if you only have two albums? well it will be a classic in a few album’s time), Pretty Little Nightmare.
We are then treated to a new song, Fallout, full of chunky riffs and a chorus that we will all be singing along to at future gigs and a great little melodic solo from Denis just to round it off.
The whole purpose of this latest tour has been to celebrate the release of their second album, 2024’s Death of The Party and to that end, the band then played the entire album – in full, from start to finish, from Vultures to Vilain, all ten songs, the way it was meant to be heard.
When bands reach a certain size and start to play on larger stages, the best ones develop a kind of ‘dance’ that sees them constantly and seamlessly rotating their positions in front of the crowd. This is something that South of Salem have perfected since the earlier shows that I saw them play. Their performance now seem effortless and slick. Throughout their set, the band were of course joined onstage by their two dancers, Lolly and Georgia. They always put on a great show. In such a tight space as the Camden Underworld, the band were unable to use pyro and only limited CO2 jets, but still the ‘show’ is something that clearly matters to South of Salem, and they do it splendidly.
After a short break in proceeding during which I’m sure the band took a moment to try and recover from the heat of the venue, they returned to their first album to finish off the night with a couple more tunes, Demons Are Forever and then finally, the song that we all went home singing, Cold Day in Hell.
South of Salem have been going from strength to strength; they have a nicely growing selection of catchy, fun-to-sing-along-to songs and are clearly talented musicians and showmen. For us lucky few who have already discovered them, this is a great thing. They have released two very well-received albums to date, so now they are in the unenviable position of having to top the success of those last two releases and improve on them in order to make the step-up to the next level. A task which I’m sure weighs heavily on them at times but I’m certain they’ve got what it takes. The band come across as consummate professionals and it is my hope to see South Of Salem rising even faster through the billings than they have done so far.
For more information about the bands and their up-and-coming gigs visit:
South of Salem | @southofsalemofficial | www.southofsalem.com
High Parasite | @highparasiteofficial | highparasite.com
In Search of Sun | @insearchofsun | www.insearchofsun.com
