[Gig Review]: BATUSHKA (POL) Feat. GERM (AU) @ Corner Hotel, Melbourne (AU), 16.01.2026.
Event: Batushka (Pol) 2026 Australian Tour, with Germ (Aus)
Date/Venue: Fri 17th January, 2026 @ Corner Hotel, Richmond, Melbourne (AU)
Writer: Brady Irwin
Photography: Richie Black Photography
Organiser: Your Mate Bookings
Mind: Blown
(Refer to end of article for artist/stakeholder links)
How to even start this review?!
Jesus Christ, dude (no pun intended).
This is a very special review, so I’ll start with honesty/a bit of meta.
Reviewing this particular show was heavily intimidating in the leadup to, and equally agonizing to mold into written output.
Every gig review I’ve ever written has a special place and is treated as sacrosanct, not to mention represents thoughts, feelings and an event which ultimately on some level is beyond description. Being music and all. Fans and lovers of it know. I can’t help but feel that in this particular case, that sense of trying to capture the intangible was and is amplified a thousand-fold.
I’ll go one further; to properly depict Batushka’s performance last Friday at Corner Hotel in Melbourne barely feels possible.
With music acting for myself (and undoubtedly for some of you reading) as a spiritual nourishment in some surrogate form to say, religion, few acts represent the physical embodiment and manifestation of that otherwise nebulous mysticism so expertly.
But - it’s only fair. We’ve been tasked with the occasion, Richie Black has provided a swathe of wonderful photographs, and I didn’t fly all the way to Poland to review this show, unlike our friends who traversed half the Earth to perform their alchemic stagecraft.
Perhaps you’ll write this off as more pseudo-intellectual nonce, and you’re likely not wrong either. Once again - this is Batushka we are talking about.
Yep, got it.
Before I ramble in similar incomprehensible fashion about the show, though - I need to address the gigantic, pendulous, smoking censer of an elephant that is in the room. It’s in the room with us, Doc.
YES. We’re talking about a band that is effectively two.
A partitioned act via one of the most public splinter-offs in recent metal history.
To even try summarising the fraught legal/interpersonal battles regarding the two bands’ ownership, control and dissemination of discography material, between Krzysztof’s act (formally titled Батюшка) and PATRIARKH could get confusing and in my opinion both futile for and irrelevant to a gig review.
Plus as one of many lucky metal-huffing Australians privileged enough to witness the ecclesiastic splendor of PATRIARKH late-2025, I’ll simply state my opinion compressed to this: both bands are equally competent, capable and deserving of high praise as commanding and unique live acts. Again, comparison between the two tours feels too outside of scope to warrant muddying the black-metal-stained waters.
THAT SAID…
What clearly separates contextual boundaries between the two performances, aside from different band members etc?
Easy answer - the physical environment itself.
A different venue for Krzysztof Drabikowski's Батюшка (Batushka; try saying that five times in quick succession), and a sizeably more compact one than Max Watt’s down the road a bit.
Seems trivial enough to question even mentioning, but for the purpose of both this review and any comparison across bands, it’s the change of venue and specifically to a smaller, more intimate one that made a resonant impact (positively) on the performance, ambience and overall tone of the show.
And boy was there tone - not just in the amps, either.
It’s crowded, it’s cramped. From the opening of doors onwards, it’s a relentless and growing procession of the faithful. Uncomfortably so at times, even, but ironically nowhere near the ‘pedestrian crossing in midday Hanoi’ you’d cop at bigger venues. Corner has always had this strange pocket-dimension effect with crowds like that, I find.
Manageably packed overall, I’d say. Much like every major international touring metal band at every stop on their Australian tours of late.
Why a few paragraphs of discussion just on venue dimensions, you say? Well, it’s important. It’s important as it greatly intensified and amplified a number of those nebulous, quasi-spiritual thoughts and feelings a band like Batushka is so easily able to evoke.
Layered in a protracted pre-show prelude of deep bass-y rumbling, ethereal strings, synth and strains, the whimsical tones emanating from the PA beforehand also provide us an aural aperitif for the night.
Usually, you cop a solid playlist of familiar acts to those on the bill as the method of warming up the mosh-oven.
Tonight’s much different. It feels purposeful and elaborate, from the Blackwater Park-esque forestry backdrop stage-side through to the elaborate use of visual cues employed by the headliners.
Thus, our senses suitably teased primed, the show finally begins after some time amongst said ambience.
Enter the first act, the very pre-gamed beer-sloshers present dialling the volume-knob down with a deference to authority like that of primary school kids, or indeed acolytes at the seminary.
….Drunk ones, but acolytes all the same.
Here to prove themselves as worthy apprentices underneath the tutelage of their black metal patriarchs, first and last in theological supports tonight - the keenly-awaited local supports, Germ.
With a lot of pre-gig buzz/hype readily overheard at the gig, discussed between friends and no small amount of preceding fanfare online, this atmospheric black metal act had both keen interest and high expectations to juggle in the eyes and minds of their audiences.
Expectations which, in my opinion, they met solidly.
During my usual ‘refresher’ pre-gig ritual (Definition: Chronic overplaying and hyperfixation of discography/ies) in the days/weeks prior, I found myself [almost] surprised.
Post/atmospheric/ackshually-black metal is something I dove into stupidly hard. Especially around the genre’s fevered zenith circa late-2010’s/early 2020’s. With every Tom, Dick and Harry in possession of depression, reverb and delay pedals, tremolo-picking technique and EZDrummer, the proliferation of solo atmospheric-black around that time now feels comparable in volume to the proliferation of That Virus. Seriously, the blackgaze scene felt at risk of imploding completely under the weight of it’s own volume, with many aspersions casts towards it for this very reason.
But there’s…. something different about Germ, though.
And in honesty, it’s hard to articulate at first. The band does fulfil every single trope in the book for the sub-genre.
It’s hard to pinpoint the differentiation, but here’s my hypothesis (live and on-disc): I’m owing a large part of their appeal to the interesting and clever melding of this well-worn style to subtle yet tasty facets of post-punk, post-hardcore and even New Wave throughout. Like a less sleepy Cold Body Radiation or a jazzy, fusion-filled Prospice-era Falloch, there’s an interesting contrast between relatively young players performing solidly heavy yet wistfully-80’s-tinged music here and now.
Another elephant in the room to assuage the bell-curve of opinion for those present on the night - the vocals.
For those uninitiated, the ‘Argh FUCK ME ANKLE, I stepped on another Lego!’ delivery, roaring in near-monotone from behind the drumkit is going to be divisive and certainly not for some. That’s fine, I get it. We interviewed Nameless from Ghost Bath last year on the podcast, and Dennis’ trademark atonal wails come to mind here.
It’s pretty unapologetic on the repetitiveness front, that’s for sure. That said, in both clean and harsh vocal delivery, I also felt there was a strong strain of … heck, where’s the map…. Jacob Bannon’s latter-era Converge, in delivery? Y’know, that Pimply Teen At Krusty Burger, all-choked-up warbling croon.
That also adds to the post-punk undertones, but it wasn’t enough for some in terms of the relentless barks emanating from the drum-throne.
Nevertheless, despite a few punters promptly exiting the pit with expressions indicating these guys are perhaps Not Their Thing, the room was otherwise about the fullest I’d seen it for an opening act at The Corner in quite some time.
Arguably easily enough done via having a single support slot overall, sure. You could easily tell a massive portion of attendees present were actively chomping at the bit to witness solo-maestro and drummer-vocalist Tim Yatras (also of Austere fame) do his thing, though. Solidly captive audience.
Considering Austere were in my opinion effectively on-par with headliners Harikiri For The Sky last year for quality, and this being a solo project offstage, Tim’s accompaniment filled both physical and sonic space impressively. Stelianos Mavridis somehow slashing out nimble, dextrous, clean and soulful lead guitar lines/solos from behind that impressively thick mop of hair, semi-unseen save for frantic left and right hand but never statue-like. In fact, let’s give it up for the amount of physical motion and energy injected into the set. These guys were squirrel-like, not shoe-gazing, and they kept that up the entire time.
Planted square and surefooted like the most brutish hardcore frontmen of our local scene, Rob Giles (also of Carbon Black) was unshakeable as a bassist- force but never stiff, his sizeable headstock swaying to the push-pull of blast-tension and groove-release. Adding to that staunch vibe was the sheer amount of firmly fretted bass-chord shapes throughout, my own out-of-practice bass-monkey hands wincing at the thought of such an effort. Rounding out the papal mercenary guard is fellow axeman Clint Morrow (of Reverb Springs et al), working as adeptly and hair-swirlingly alongside his fellow guitarist in the process of plying all manner of intricate arpeggiations, melodic flourishes and tightly-wound tremolo sections.
From discography pulls ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Asteroid of Sorrow’ through to new track ‘November’ and even a Grey Waters throwback via ‘Broken’, the songs felt diverse but similar enough to act as one continuous track. Evoking albums like Meshuggah’s Catch Thirty-Three, the cascading blend of tracks intermingled without pause or awkwardness, A solid wall of contiguous sound, but not any duller for it.
Our local scribes performed a pre-game warm-up liturgy that respectfully and skilfully paid homage to the Polish deacons, the audience erupting in unified baptismal jubilance on conclusion.
A break in proceedings, the congregation helping themselves lavishly to the more fun half of Christ’s communion - the alcoholic part - visibly stirring with excited impatience overall. On the note of booze consumption - one must pay appropriate homage to the patronage of our bar staff, a blessed and constantly embattled crew working feverishly to sate the unrelenting tide of pious pint-sinkers. The Aussie equivalent to knocking upon a few barrels of wormwood absinthe at the monastery, post-pilgrimage.
Peeps were damn thirsty! Like, thrash-metal gig thirsty.
And then - the chiming of the bells.
Like monks stuck into wormwood barrels of absinthe post-pilgrimage, the unholy din was raucous initially. From that rhythmic twang of the bell-chime, however, the mob was silenced with clerical efficiency. Then began the first few bars of an extended, mournful, sombre refrain via Orthodox hymn ‘We Bow Before Your Cross’, to the progressive dimming and reddening of stage-light.
Well. Aside from one apostate up the back, who felt calling another patron slurs you’ll rarely hear outside of South Park’s 90’s material as the most effective means of asking someone to move aside. Thankfully, this heretic was denied the partaking of ceremony by the temple guard. But hey, he who sins shall incur the appropriate atonement, and for the one aggressive flog present tonight, his was indulging in shame listening to the headliners outside through muffled, thick walls.
I mention this person not to shame them, but to reiterate just how envenomed and insulted the surrounding audience was to this affront, and what that also implies. Namely, it implies a certain reverence and plea for self-discipline which in itself hearkens straight back to the monastic, pious vibe generated by our headliners. It’s an interesting thought around environment and behaviour, but I digress yet again, huh?
Multiple minutes pass.
The isolated chanting continues, largely uninterrupted save for the odd uncontrollable holler and exclamation for the band now slowly shuffling onstage. To quote RPG-deacon, fallen gaming false-idol and Bethesda Studios head Todd Howard: ‘It just works.’
Elsewhere, this whole thing’d be a hoot.
You’d meme it. It’d be ripe for shitposting, it’s that kitsch. Folks would be on their phones left, right and centre.
As the sullen, transfixed and silent audience attests, though, this lengthy pre-song ritual is crafted with such finesse and care that it almost can’t be mocked. It’s just too well-performed, too well set up.
The commitment and details-orientation isn’t of course unique to one Polish band, sure. I can name equally prodigious bands in terms of stagecraft and I know you can too. But in the moment, it feels unmatched.
From the beautiful, rustic set-pieces and props to the intricacy of the bands’ elaborate and deliberately-obfuscating robes, everything about this is steeped in a respect and reverence to the esotericism, timelessness and piety of Slavic Orthodoxy. It’s an ode to both denominational, theological and seminary practices, norms and aesthetics that elsewhere would be relegated to the annals of hyper-specific post-graduate study.
Certainly, it carries the same air of craftsmanship as any well-researched piece of empirical theology. Yeah, that’s the one. This feels empirical in terms of attention to detail. Not just thorough. It’s a tangibly an end-product of what must surely have been/be painful levels of examination, deliberation, consternation.
Juxtaposing that more yellow-gold, white and blue chroma that springs to mind when thinking of Christian priesthood, the blackened robes, minimalist and rustic props, blood-red lighting and unflinching stage presence give off a very dark, esoteric aura.
There’s something metal about that, sure, but it also feels educational. Not to mention deeply druidic. It’s a showcase of long-forgotten Christian Orthodoxy, brandishing an emotional honesty shied away from by more post-modern, capitalist-friendly counterparts. There’s no stucco grey-white New McDonald’s/Stocklands chic here. There’s no toxic-positivity-as-sermon hand-holding Kumbaya. It’s actually quite bleak and confronting in many instances, which is entirely the point.
‘We Bow Down Before Your Cross’ concludes as our theologic prelude, the band taking point at their respective places at a pace determined only by a long-forgotten God. Elsewhere, such a protracted ritual would feel merciful in its’ conclusion. But it’s not.
With ADHD medication long past its’ extended-release shelf-life in my bloodstream, caffeine similarly absent, I was fully expecting dissociation, fidgeting, frustration or even just an incursion of thought-chatter.
Nope. My mind is… weirdly still. Probably the stillest and most attentive it’s been all day at that.
I’m locked in, and from sporadic askew glances across the audience, so too are they. It’s like a cybernetic cleric came tore through the place with a shock-baton.
Finally, hands clasp respective instruments and the band begins proper. We react with an expulsion of joyous fury that’d make Scott Morrison blush come Sunday morning at Hillsong.
There’s an incremental yet smooth swell from vaguely post-metal leanings into full-blown black metal might amidst a hail of choral vocals. Throat-gargling-salt rasps alongside thunderously, stupidly heavy guitar/bass tone, standing proudly astride the accompanying harmonic, deep-register bellows, chants and soaring cleans. All the while, divine hands urge the sermon onwards via the drumkit.
Completely unfettered by the cheers of raucous appreciation of their drawn-out arrival, Кристофор (Krzysztof Drabikowski) Himself (Guitars/Vocals) is adjoined by fellow monks in study: Witold Ustapiuk (Guitars/Vocals), ‘Jatzo’ (Jacek) Łazarow (Drums), Witold Ustapiuk (Guitars), Дедушка (Dedushka) on bass and additional choral members, whose identities are both often deliberately kept obscure and/or rotate regularly. All amble slowly but deliberately forward one at a time, lighting Roman-style candles with a soft amber glow, bowing respectfully and slowly to one another.
The procession continues achingly slow, with a firm and stoic determinism that felt more enactment of divine law than metal band. Censers are swung, bells chimed, a plaque with humble artwork familiar to Litourgiya lovers held slowly aloft, then carefully placed back on the ornate dias. Faces obscured from view, chanting hymns of ancient Church Slavonic. The entire thing feels ancient - because it is. This is literally a resurrection, a revival, of traditions once wrought to dust.
Tell you what - this iteration of Christianity is some metal as fuck stuff, right here. Certainly beats the hell out of my own ‘I fully understand how Tom Araya was the singer for Slayer and also a Catholic’ Sunday masses with my dearly departed grandmother. And I’d attribute the death-metal-coded tone of that place as very likely influential in my enjoyment of metal’s darker thematic content.
We’re whisked away somewhere, really, taken to places not touched on by the increasingly evangelist, McMansion stucco white-grey that is modern Christianity’s attempts to retain relevance. I can picture the solitude. The cautious gazes towards fires on the horizon, indicating either homely hearths or the latest blaze by roaming marauders. The simplistic yet powerfully mindful practice of sitting with little materially, but much spiritually/psychologically.
Just how all that gets translated into a melding of blistering black metal, crest-like waves of doom/post-metal riffing and subtleatmospheric black metal flourishes is honestly beyond me. It demonstrates a level of serious devotion towards a theme that transcends ‘musical performance’. Were it not so devastatingly heavy, it’d be a subject of academic discourse. (Theologians, take some notes).
From here, I’m going to refrain from the usual play-by-play of each track as you’d expect in a gig review.
Thus, it means I need to discard much of ridiculous note-taking I made during and after the gig (where I wasn’t completely transfixed in a state of pure flow, that is). Anthological study of ‘Pesn’ 1’ continues through to ‘Pesn’ 8’, then forwards into the circle-pit-inducing, crowd-pleasing transition towards ‘Yekteniya I: Ochishcheniye’ (my favourite track of theirs/one of my fave black metal tracks ever made) through volumes III, IV and finally, ‘Yekteniya V: Istina’.
Sure, those are indeed the titles. Let’s meditate a while longer on the musical and aesthetic elements present throughout each of the songs on offer. Antithetical to formulaic, the consistency of these features are warped and contorted like the skilful penmanship of devotional prose. Variations on a theme, sure, but readily identifiable in concept.
Once again - Christ, where to even go with this…?!
Well, there’s the Gregorian slant to the clean vocal delivery - from Krysztof and Witold’s warbling melodic baritone, through to the complex acapella of the band as a whole. You’d be forgiven for thinking the entire backing-vocal element was a track the entire-time, such was the sniper-like accuracy and overwhelming vastness of the multi-tiered harmonic hums, thrums, chants, bellows, soars and lulls. These vocals aren’t just clean, they downright push through an otherwise darkened aesthetic to act as a starkly beautiful counterpoint.
A counterpoint indeed, to the refractive blast of the clergymens’ rasps. Surely you’d think the lyrical theme was Satanic, occultic, evil. The dry hoarseness and guttural screeching atop so many hyper-blasting moments throughout would belie the average normie Christian’s view of this whole affair as heretical. Which I find supremely ironic. It’s testament (pun not intended but here we are) to metal’s capacity for being adaptive, fluid and respectful as a vessel for just about any thematic structure.
Oh yeah, I mentioned blastbeats. Right!
With apologies to my Catholic Nan above (may Mona Irwin rest in eternal peace), my bogan-Aussie metalhead proclaims a massive ‘fuck yeah we are!’ alongside a rhetorical ‘does the Pope shit in the woods?’. Of fuckin’ course we are talking blastbeats, mate. Plenty of them. Appended with furious, fierce technical precision by tremolo-picking delivered with enough deft precision to have the average black-metal bedroom guitar-bro sent home secretly weeping to God for penance afterwards.
We’re talking a band steeped primarily in black metal after all, savvy?
And if Jatzo is anything behind the kit, he is akin to the deadliest and most forceful of templars. One who’d be just as home sinking the knife quietly into an apostate’s neck in the late-evening cool of a rural Estonian barn as he would charging into fierce battle against encroaching marauders.
Pulsating with a subdued, almost meditative plod at times to give the ambience fair sonic breathing-room, it’s his inevitable strides into snare-and-kick-wielding fury that most betray this monastic imagery. Seriously, the sheer machine-precision of tonight’s drumwork just adds so much to the mental imagery of monks in deep study.
Some may argue that fellow rhythmic scribe had his bass-frets left to the annals of sonic understudy, what with the weight of 6+ strings and brutally subsonic tuning from the might-as-well-be-basses-themselves guitars. That would be the view of the layperson, my child. A true bassist plies his trade with consistency, creative flourish and mindful attentiveness, as Piotr Kozłowski has done so this evening. Wavering with only a fraction more headstock movement and head-bobbing throughout, his sonic glue helps line the pages perfectly.
This review, like the study of esoteric and long-fallen Eastern European orthodoxy, could potentially fill volumes. As congregates, we stood in pure transfixion throughout, given ample opportunity as the lay-public to boom applauding appreciation in the few moments of silence between tracks/during interludes. Our dedication and patience to respectfully witness the event paid off in the slow but inevitable build towards circle-pitting, headbanging movement.
I’d like to take a page out of Batushka’s reverent, iconic and expertly-crafted book and practice some faithful pause. I’ve gone on for probably far too long enough already for a discussion about what is effectively two bands’ sets. You have been patient in your pilgrimage so far and I thank you for this, Dear Reader.
Belief in whatever form is important and not something to shirk off as part of the human experience.
We all have them, irrespective of our religious, moral and value-based positions in thought, and life.
To that end - I’m ending my review of the night with a firmly-held belief of mine after seeing both iterations of Batushka/PATRIARKH live:
This is not a one-in-a-million live act. This is a never-again act. You cannot and will not experience a heavy music show like Batushka, and I guarantee once there, you’ll experience something ephemeral. Something bigger, further beyond even the readily-familiar spiritual nourishment that a great show provides. Beyond faith or organised religion.
As a devotee of heavy music or indeed the musical arts in general, Dear Reader, there’s no limit to the emphasis upon which I implore you to catch this band live, if the opportunity arises.
The sacrosanct lyrical material may be derived from ages, dialect and traditions past, but the clergymen live and breathe among us here and now - might as well experience black metal divination whilst we live and breathe on this Earth.
Who knows what’s next, after all?
