York Minster
Friday, April 25 2025
There was hype. There was misinformation. There was a 10 minute window to buy tickets before they sold out. There was a lot of anticipation.
I was half expecting protestors with “Down With This Sort of Thing” placards, and was let down. Thankfully. After a solitary claim that two members of Plague of Angels had played with a band that put profane words and images on their merchandise, there was a brief flurry of outrage before it was pointed out that two of them had once, some time ago, being session musicians and yes they had done some music for that band, but they were not band members. Just shows how one comment on the internet exploded, with no real proof behind it. I’m not even naming the band, you can of course search online for it but really, let’s not, let’s just put it to bed and say no more about it.
For the first time, there was going to be Metal in the Minster, as Symphonic Metal band Plague of Angels were joined by pipe-organist David Pipe (yes, seriously) in York Minster which was packed to the rafters as they played to 1400 people in the Gothic cathedral, and if they had any bats in the belfry they were certainly shaken loose. We heard that even off duty Minster staff were coming in because so many people wanted to see this.
Speaking of bats, Mr Pipe did make a joke about Ozzy not being able to join us as he was at the Birmingham Bat Sanctuary. For those who have not heard the story, 43 years ago someone threw what Ozzy Osbourne believed was a rubber bat on the stage at a Black Sabbath gig, and he bit the head off. Only thing is, it wasn’t a fake bat, it was dead, frozen real bat. Questions about the incident are now Ozzy’s least favourite, leading to my comment “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the quips.” Well I thought it was funny, even if nobody else did.
What were our expectations, and did the show live up to them? None of my party had heard any Plague of Angels before, but we knew the bands whose music was going to be played on the organ so we expected something familiar yet different in the first half, and kept an open mind about the second.
It was a great start with Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, beautifully suited to the surroundings and the overall evening. What we didn’t expect was more Bach, as we thought there would be more metal covers. It was followed by two Black Sabbath mash ups of Heaven & Hell, Electric Funeral, Nativity in Black and Paranoid, sandwiching Tony Iommi’s Fluff. There was time for some Philip Glass before the Deep Purple mash up of Child in Time and Burn, followed by some of Jon Lord’s orchestral work – all expertly executed, but not what we were expecting and we were not surprised to hear later that quite a number of people left in the first half and came back for the second. There was a lot of battle jackets in evidence and the audience was definitely weighted towards metal fans. The overall ambience could have done without the sale of fizzy drinks in cans before the break, as the chorus of ring pulls being opened echoed around the nave and did detract from the performance.
Another thing that people picked up on was that it wasn’t two halves, it was more two thirds/one third split and we would rather have had more of Plague of Angels as they were epic.
Lead vocalist Emilie Nox had a pure, clear voice that would not have been out of place in the choir stalls, right up until she turned into Linda Blair from The Exorcist and belted out a growling vocal that would make big hairy blokes in Swedish Death Metal bands turn green with envy. I thought it was a dub. One person with me thought there was a hidden vocalist duetting and waited for them to appear.
No, she really can switch from sweetly lilting like a lark to sounding like she had surreptitiously just downed a pint of grave. It was mesmerising. I can’t tell you what songs they sang having not been a fan, but I will be learning them shortly, but what a performance not just from her, but from the whole band. Having gone on with no firm expectations, this part of the show blew us away.
She asked at the end: “remember us.”
How could we ever forget?
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