[Gig Review] MALIGNANT AURA (AU) ‘Where All Of Worth Comes To Wither’ LP Launch @ Bendigo Hotel (Melb, AU), 04.04.26.
Writer: Brady Irwin
Photographer:Ofir Gee (Nose Bleed)
Event:Malignant AuraWhere All Of Worth Comes To Wither Album Launch
Artists:Malignant Aura (Brisbane, AU), Carcinoid, Gravepeeler & Thrall (Melbourne, AU)
Location:The Bendigo Hotel, Collingwood, Melbourne, AU
Date: Saturday, 4th April 2026 (Easter Saturday!)
Refer to each artists’ section below for relevant links, additional links at end of article.
Huge thanks to the Malignant Aura dudes for having us on for this gig - fantastic set, loving the new LP!
Coming soon - ‘Gallery of Brewicide XXII’, which will contain additional gig footage alongside Noise Bleed’s photography as shown here!
Support the music industry.
Support your local scene.
As Always,
Peace, Love and Grindcore - Brady/Ofir.
It’s actually been a really long time since I’ve just gone ahead and covered a gig happening locally with local bands. So long, in fact, that last time in question was my first ever Gig Review written for this blog (Nicolas Cage Fighter @ Stay Gold, Brunswick (Melbourne, AU) - Here’s the link if interested).
The team have done a fantastic job of locally-based/domestic album launches in the past - see here for Dean’s coverage of Ghostsmoker’s Inertia Cult LP launch in March last year as one of many great examples.
With the music-press crowd off chasing one of the seeming billions of bands flooding our shores this year (not complaining, and in fact busy applying for as many as I/we can), important tours from domestic artists can sometimes be sidelined.
This in mind, I’ve decided ahead of moving back to Melbourne in a couple of months that I’d start taking the opportunity to do more Aussie-based lineups alongside international tours. I’d be a hypocrite with that little byline above if I didn’t now, would I?
Before we get into the review proper, see below for streaming links to Malignant Aura’s latest LP, Where All Of Worth Comes To Wither. This is an album launch after all, and there’s no better way to immerse yourself in the written/visual account than by accompanying the musical journey, too. You might have to - according to a couple of MA members and their social media, the band rightfully had high demand for both physical LP’s and other merch.
One of many albums I sometimes cuss about not getting time to review, esp. in the transition from writer-grunt to blog-owner, was this one. The melding of classically late 80’s/early 90’s mournful guitar refrains a-la early Katatonia/My Dying Bride, mixed with pummelling sections of actually-heavy and furious death metal, gives off an aura (sigh) of sincerity and care in the craft. It’s received praise internationally, which isn’t something too oft caught by the Brisbane doom scene in particular. Nevertheless, despite WACTW earning its’ praise, we ain’t here to discuss that - back to the gig, and we’ll start with the venue.
This also being my first time in the refurbished Bendigo Hotel, the lick-o’-paint, different brews on-tap and slightly less Saw movie-trailer coded bathrooms were the only noticeably different aspects about it in terms of appearance.
In terms of atmosphere, though? I hadn’t asked the Malignant lads or staff if it was a deliberate ambience move, lighting techs rightfully not being a charitable service all the time, the venue saving costs, etc - the lighting inside was appreciably darker than even my many hazy (IPAs?) recollections of the place pre-closure could conjure up. Except maybe that one time Sigh played and the room went dark so we could watch things get set on fire, that was cool.
What I’m ambling towards points-wise, like the worlds’ most hyperlexic and over-inclusive-speech enjoying zombie, is that the place emanated another layer of musty blackness, dankness that veiled the relatively cramped bandroom into even eerier surrounds.
Perfect conditions for these musty, d-beat loving, basement-dwelling death metal openers:
I: Gravepeeler
Links:
Normally, for an opening band you’d have your usual mildly self-conscious drift of the first few punters
Access wasn’t strictly denied by the ferocity of our first bands’ frontman Crispin Mylius - but the implication, as Dennis Reynolds would say, was definitely there to perhaps think twice about entering the broadening circle of bemused onlookers.
Prowling and stalking the dimly-lit floor of The Bendigo Hotel like he’s spoiling for a fight, Crispin’s jacked-up in a few ways. Broad-shouldered and built, the frontman encircles those trusting enough to clasp pints at around midway-point back to the bar. Seriously, I’ve been to a lot of hardcore and metal shows, including at the Bendi - Old Mate here had us pushed almost back to the sound desk whilst he prowled, gargling a caustic mix of growls, hardcore-styled barks and even some blackened shrieks.
Having squared off (or at least semi-circled, to be pedantic) with his own one-man pit, Crispin’s aggressive barks are supplemented by the frantic and stylistically diverse stylings of Angus Klemm (Guitar), Kit Croydon (Drums) and Jeremy Lovie (Bass). With past/current tenure inclusive of acts like Hormagaunt, Trenches and Kinesthesis, the outfit readily prove with little time that they’re not the stereotypically greener first act. Anything but.
Together, the Melbourne-based death metal wrecking-crew eke out a nice little charcuterie of extreme-metal sounds as the Sun wanes outside. You can’t go wrong with song titles like ‘Mort Flesh’, particularly not when said tracks bounces from an almost arena-rock, Swansong-era Carcass swagger into crust/d-beat addled death metal, punctuating these violent musical outbursts with doomier moments that wouldn’t upset a fan of Celtic Frost.
Kit keeps it genuine, announcing your requisite opening-band thanks - shouted heartily across the venue, no less, to applause from the small but growing contingent. Tracks like ‘Wearing Reptilian Skin’ lash out with discordant Morbid Angel-style sheets of riffage, threatening a more technical and complex arrangement before locking back into punky, grooving rhythms that are reminiscent both of lineup/city colleagues Carcinoid and also recently formed d-beat/hardcore act Resistance.
Earning both a growing collection of punters and resounding applause (for example, during calls to “Steal a sticker from our merch desk and put it up somewhere!”), the band whip through a deadly concoction of hardcore-infused death metal that absolutely isn’t deathcore-leaning.
Delicious, gruff, distortion-soaked, aggressive. A great first addition and a well-placed warmer for the death-doom pie currently baking. These guys are relatively sparse on the releases front, but what is available via their Bandcamp above is tasty and indicative of their high-energy set. Glad to have finally caught ‘em!
Heading outside into the beer garden and noting the new lick of paint/lack of tour-poster wallpaper, I’m feeling morbidly curious. Who else but metalheads to take a supposedly sacrosanct weekend and mulch it into an evening of beer-swilling, headbanging and appreciating being screamed at by a bunch of folks in black shirts for a few hours? Ah, now that’s Easter.
As we flock back inside for the tell-tale signs of the sound-check, once the second act is onstage it’s readily apparent that Jesus doesn’t want the next lot for his sunbeams:
II: THRALL (Melbourne, AU)
Links:
Bandcamp (Music)
Bandcamp (Merch)
If the brutish death-metal upstart thugs in Gravepeeler were here for a warm-up, then Melbourne’s next offering in Thrall have already lobbed a blazing Molotov full of blackened-death lighter fluid.
It’s now just a case of watching how the flames unfurl.
In the ever-decreasing amount of stage light, now bathed deep in red, a second lot of figures take to the Bendi’s relatively cramped stage confines. The lack of a physical barrier also helps add intimacy to the dark choral refrains of a backing track, staunch folks pulling back to wind their first blackened-death punch.
And what a punch it is! Neither Thrall nor their opener ‘Dark Matter’ are here to fuck spiders, to quote a slice of classic Australiana. A slow, martial intro is about all the time we get from the troupe before all blackened death-metal hell breaks loose. Standing as though a back-brace and spinal rod were literally just inserted into his vertebrae (grimace of determined fury included), frontman/guitarist Tom Void gives steely-eyed sweeps across the venue as he unfurls a roar of throaty, gargling roars and shrieks.
Once things kick off into black metal overdrive, there’s nary a moment through the whole set where either guitarist (the other being Ramez Bathish) isn’t permanently whirring in a motion of endless tremolo and fret-spanning black metal chords. Recent band addition and capable bassist Ian Mather holds the riffage down, punctuating a busy enough span of fret-jumping in lockstep with his fretted and stick-sporting compatriots.
Unleashing an unstoppable force from behind the kit is sticksman Jared Mawdsley, well known locally for his tenure in thrashers Destruktor. Dude is playing stark, flat-out raving mad, the hands in a similar state of permanent whirring motion as those of his bandmates as he rains endless high-octane drumkit artillery-fire on the audience. All in all, the band are alight with headbanging and hair-whipping as close to the front as you can get, adding to a malevolent, incursionary vibe onstage.
Second track is announced as a newbie, but I didn’t catch the title - Oops, All Music Writers With ADHD !
Threatening us with a slightly-less-fast time but only momentarily, follow-up number ‘Gloaming’ has but a momentary reprieve via a doomier, more measured intro. That doesn’t last long at all, however, and what ensues thenceforth is just about some of the most savage, ballistic fare of the entire night. This one was truly a searing, seething number, earning stunned applause on its’ conclusion by a now-near-packed-out Bendigo Hotel.
Fourth offering, ‘Nihil’, from the Schisms LP released , shows a little more restraint. The jagged, ever-familiar refrains of minor chordal tones and arpeggiation in classic black metal style take on an additional layer of heaviness with the tempo pulled back. So far, it’s been a fairly relentless set, and this breathing-room ironically only allows a doomier number to encapsulate us with more discomfort.
‘Veils’ also features on the same album as the prior track, and is about as concerned with reticence as a certain Orange Man is with our current petrol prices. I really enjoyed the pivot in this song from the blistering, technical blackened death riffage into one heck of a catchy, hard-rock leaning riff in the latter half. Big Kvelertak vibes, and the jazzy timing as the track tails off earnt a big response from the close-knitted crowd.
Closing out the trifecta of newer material, ‘Epoch’ is announced as the sets’ finale with nothing but Easter friendliness (“This one’s about the end of the Earth!” - relevant), and delivered with anything but that. The misanthropy is made manifest through a really cool swirling of traditional black/death metal riffing that is interspersed with jagged, stop-start riffing and tempo dynamics that feel like a much more evil, far less peace-and-love focused black-metal Gojira.
Being originally Hobart-based and originally the conception, production and playing of one man, Tom seems to have found himself amongst quite the capable ensemble. With new lineup additions, it’s likely you’ll be seeing more of these guys around the circuit. Good!
Speaking of regulars on the circuit - look what the diabolical, flea-infested undead cat dragged in. Whether from sewer or cemetery I’m not entirely sure, but every local knows the stench of this iconic Melburnian death metal troupe when they hear it:
IIi: CARCINOID (Melbourne, AU)
LINKS:
We literally reviewed Carcinoid a few weeks back for our coverage of Dethfest 2026. Even at that time, I made comment about how ubiquitous and ever-present this band is on gig/tour posters. They’re up there with fellow locals such as ISUA and Mammon’s Throne as dudes who will throw down a show seemingly anywhere, anytime.
It’s that familiarity that brings a sizeable addition to what I assumed was the bulk of the audience (apparently not)… but it’s also their craft. In a day and age where every second band is trying to out-tech, out-prog and out-Artificial Brain one another, there’s something relieving and almost comfortable about a serving of muck laden DM served up old-school style.
Having seen these guys more times than I can count, I’m nonetheless going to go broken-record and reiterate my sentiments. That being that bands always deserve a writeup and our punter attention from the very act of preparing for and participating in a show, no matter how seasoned/familiar.
Speaking of seasoned… well, no. This is Dismember/ Jungle Rot meat-and-taters sludgy death metal. The underlying putridity of Melbourne’s CBD is laid bare with ‘Mired In Decay’, a rousing barrage of chunky riffage and fun time-signature changes. By their own hand, if they weren’t so practiced onstage they could be struggling - drummer Michael has a particularly rough lot trying to discern the swampish, regurgitated balls of fuzz-laden riffage sledged out by Az (Aaron Smith) and Nathan Haskell. Bassist Jess Ainsaar gets more than a few hoots and “Woo, Jess! Go Jess!” from the audience, notes being given ample opportunity through the set to ring out in crusty, distorted solo lines in the moments where the chugging actually stops.
Or the drum fills. Or the clever little lead refrains and fills sprinkled throughout. Or, least of all, the menacing caveman grunt of animated frontman/vocalist Tim Bystersky. Much like the aforementioned set, Tim’s an endlessly writhing (local band pun sort of intended) heap o’ frontman - always whirling, headbanging, gesticulating along with his frenzied crew.
Knocking out a stellar run from ‘Mired In Decay’ through to the up-tempo blistering of ‘Tyrannic Cantation’, this one was my favourite of a previous recent set and it’s my favourite tonight. Pulling no stops and going no-holds barred only to rest on a massive breakdown riff, it’s always guaranteed to be a pivotal before/after point with the crowd. Very few heads are locked straight onto necks and even fewer are stood still, signifying a job well-done. Especially with how the song just cuts off following a final blasting salvo, supplanted by high-register shrieks from ol’ Tim.
‘Suffering Reborn’ sees the band tinkering further with both riff and rhythm dynamics, and the jerky nature of the track is given a punky, strong d-beat backing to ensure heads are kept swiveling throughout. There’s nary a moment’s rest, however, as ‘Ruinous Possession’ arrives to do exactly what it says on the tin with both crowd and band. The tasty use of chokes on the kit just adds to the grimy early-era Cannibal Corpse feel oozing from the bands’ collective pores, and the locals love it.
Finishing up with a mangled mash of tracks ‘Gut Rot’ and ‘Strangulation’, Carcinoid receive a booming applause that is indicative of anything but over-familiarity from the Melbourne scene. See? There’s a reason these guys keep popping up. If you build it, they will pay tickets and inhabit it briefly to headbang, fist-pump, throw horns, cheer - and hopefully pick up some merch too.
That about does it for the Victorian representation. It’s now time for our headliners, and they’ve received an important missive from yeesh, The Great Old Ones?
Here to ply their own brand of visceral death-doom, bring ripper 2nd LP Where All Of Worth Comes To Wither, Queenslands’ doomiest approach the stage.
IV: MALIGNANT AURA (bRISBANE, au)
You’d be easily forgiven for mistaking these guys as a Melbourne band. Musically they’re temperamental, brooding and with no shortage of European influence.
Feels Melbourne-y, sure - but Victorians these gloom-stalking northerners most certainly ain’t.
On conclusion of the set we’re about to discuss, I think a lot of locals learned (or remembered) two key things about this bands’ existence: One, what a wide but currently-unoccupied niche Malignant Aura inhabits amongst banana-bending countrymen in Queensland and two, what an example they serve of something missing from our own sludge-heavy scene. Sure, we’ve got doom aplenty here, but we don’t really have it with a Queenslander’s slant.
Again, on first glance you could indeed attribute the heavily Scandinavian influence to a temperate clime like ours. But, having lived in both cities for about as long each, I can safely attest to there being another level of oppressive humidity up north that can seriously do a number on one’s sanity. Not even shade, that beloved blackened goth colour of Melbourne herself, is enough to escape the constant encroachment of stiflement, of sweat.
I mean jeez, guys - NOLA and Tampa Bay. ‘Nuff said.
Barrel-chested vocalist Tim Smith (of Brisbane death metallers Defamer) strides onstage with his accompaniment, as purposeful and serene in intent as one another. Eschewing the pump-it-up ‘WHAT THE FUCK IS UP MEL-BORN?!’ hardcore-frontman machismo probably happening to some scene-kids at Stay Gold around the same time (unashamed ‘core fan here, both are fine), there’s little oratory or fanfare.
I overhear some snickering about the large brass gong situated centre-stage right in front of the mic stand, and for a rare moment feel like sticking up for some Queenslanders to get snippy about it, but I ease off in the knowledge their heads are about to get proper mashed by one seriously bludgeoning bastard of an album. Live, at that.
Little did the poor wretches in attendance know the disdainful, morose journey they would be about to undertake.
…is what I would’ve said, had punters not all selectively volunteered their time and money to be here, knowing full well what they paid for. And boy howdy were there plenty of you; that familiarity old-Bendi sets in just nicely when wedged shoulder-to-shoulder irrespective of where you are in about 90% of the room. Really impressive turnout when you’ve got Easter Saturday, family business, drunk mates texting about getting bags, all that and plenty of competing gigs on offer.
It’s also unsurprising. There’s a perverse enjoyment to doom at times, I find, and it’s a very different, more moribund curiosity in the live setting as well.
How and why else would one enjoy being beaten over the head by a pummeling procession of chords, interrupted by the mournful wailing of Chris Clark’s haunting lead tones, massaged along by the thundering bass work of Jonathon Ennis? Why else would we forsake Jesus-related time to congregate in black shirts together, just to be growled out by angry-sounding people about misery, misfortune and despair?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to heckle drummer Pete Robertson anywhere near as much as I wanted to (I won’t deduct points for not wearing the dicktowel.com hat this time, mate), but I figured I should ease off on a bloke playing a full album of death-doom, especially when said blokes’ past tenure (Malakyte, Awful Noise, Tazer Torture, Ironwitch etc) is typically two speeds: flat-stick, and even fucking faster. I’ve shared the stage with Pete in our old band Awful Noise (hey Lindon and crew!), and this is a decidedly different context in terms of feel. There’s a gravity and seriousness accompanying the depression-drenched instrumental opener ‘Where All of Worth Comes to Wither’ that negates the usual loony howls, cat-calls and ten-pints-deep 120-decibel bar-side conversations on the sets’ arrival.
And that’s generally the way she goes bud, to quote a Nova Scotian trailer park dad.
…That is, until the face-melting death metal eruption of ‘The Pathetic Festival’ shoulder-barges like the beefiest quarterback Mt Isa has ever seen. Cascading like a downpour in the tropics, there’s a good few minutes of head-wrenching insanity, the entire band lithe and energised. Like a conductor, Tim finishes some caustic death growlin’ belches, waves his hands… and just like that, we relent alongside the band. Kind of a cool power to have there, Tim! Banging that big ol’ gong with that big ol’ hammer of yours onstage unironically certainly helps refocus stray cats too, evidently. Hmm, might be onto something.
Things proceed in a plodding, agonising pace from here. That 10mg booster of Ritalin long worn off, any worries about incursionary ADHD thought-traffic are fenced off, muscled out, told to jog on, by the sheer volume and sonic weight of the amps. It’s getting Boris-ey up in here, but more in terms of sensory overwhelm via feedback than stylistic similarities.
Mind you, the classic death-doom switch-up from intense musical frying pan to gloomy, depressive slow cooker is a winning combination, as the resultant applause suggests. The formula repeats anew for follow-up track… but it also doesn’t. ‘Languishing in the Perpetual Mire’ is as muck-ridden and filthy as the name suggests, but the slow guitar wails evoke an early-Katatonia-n wistfulness, more than anything. That’s when Smith’s vocals break from their own containment, oscillating into snarling high-register shrieks like a feral cat, Ennis and Robertson slamming the bands’ brakes and accelerator in equal measure as we lurch in a push-pull dynamic that is very satisfying. The outro riffage tumbles with double-kicks aplenty and then finally, a morose suspension of slow guitar-leads in isolation before one tragedy (doom-metal tragic, not bad tragic!) strikes a final disheartening riff to Tim’s spoken-word before Clark unleashes a widdly, pondering solo.
‘Beneath A Crown of Anguish’ has a tumbling arpeggiated intro that seriously reminds me of fellow Brisbanites Disentomb, but that’s where Brisbane-based death-doom and brutal-death/slam comparisons end. For one, old mate from the latter is often swatting at bees or something violent onstage; Tim’s instead widely arcing his hands in slow, deliberate gestures as he unleashes long, more gravelly growls than you’d find at the other bands’ set.
It’s a challenging, punishing number really. Not for the seasoned doomster (or just autists like myself who appreciate the thought-flattening effect of repetition, down-tuning and Long Angry Sad-Man Scream), but the ambling, ten-minute-plus length is filled with a lot more restraint and use of minimalist than its’ forebears. That’s until about the halfway mark, when things take a sharp early Dark Tranquillity turn, and we get a bombastic, martial riff that brings ambivalent heads back into the room. Not that pretty much anyone is scarpering; if anything, they’re packing closer as the set progresses. Just in time for the tracks’ triumphant rise throughout, building to a heady crescendo that again garners applause - especially when Tim physically crawls over the front foldback, effectively crying what sounds like genuine tears of frustrated melancholy over a slow wail. That kicks the applause up a notch. YEAH! FEELINGS! You’re allowed to have ‘em, male metalheads.
This not being a thrash metal gig or a punk matinee, a wrenching set of slow deliberation is pretty heavy on the attentional faculties of any with a smartphone these days. The fact there’s not your usual banter for reprieve might also factor into why a few ducked out to the beer-garden around this point. It’s a long one but also - these guys are playing a full death-doom album.
Anyway, I digress.
‘An Abhorrent Path to Providence’ definitely has that depressively-climactic feel of an intro, for the final track on any self-respecting death-doom album. The sordid notes languish in what feels equal amounts agony to that expressed through the moribund, howling guitar leads and thudding, plodding learnt-helplessness of the rhythm section. Tim ups the ante on his theatrics, wavering and gesticulating in a way that reminds me of Sigh, or locals KILAT. It’s just such an expertly-written swelling towards a heaving, monstrous death metal midsection, there was never any chance of the track not featuring some serious headbanging action from the crowd. Heck, I headbutted the foldback (a foldback later dramatically pawed at and kicked by our happy-camper frontman) my head was swinging that hard. We’re given one final burst into death metal territory, Pete unleashing his final hellish spray of thrash-n-grind-influenced battery upon a sizeable kit before tapering off gently.
And so, as the final few minutes of cavernous, clawing, agonally woeful riffing comes to a close, so too does both Where All of Worth Comes To Wither, and this gig for the evening.
In an almost Sabbath-ian hat-tip (fly high, Ozz, we miss ya), the band close with their namesake (((hint: that’s ‘ Malignant Aura’, wink))) from the first LP, Abysmal Misfortune Is Draped Upon Me, HM-2-coded thick distortion slamming the venue in time with equally gritty bass and wide, careful plodding of drums. The introductory riff builds in much the same way as Black Sabbath’s ‘Black Sabbath’ does on that album, Black Sabbath: A prepondering, lurching and straight-up evil classic metal riff, a repetitive riff refrain and the gargled, belching roar of our orator. The double-lead assault gives it an even more traditional flair, a fittingly simplistic, anti-climactic but powerful doom metal ending that has no need for fanfare, yet receives it in spades from a gobsmacked audience.
As someone who is avidly and obsessively into the far sludgier or shoe-gazing/aloof post-metal ends of the doom-metal spectrum, Malignant Aura are definitely a band that appeal to me a lot more than similar bands of their ilk. That’s just recorded, though. Live? Forget about it! If you’re into your slow-and-heavy, get yourself out to see these banana-bending bad-times-man brewers of QLD’s finest modern death-doom XXXX. Magnitudes heavier in the flesh than an already crushing, all-consuming discography.
It ain’t all Dreamworld and sunny smiles up north, kids!
Have a listen to Where All Of Worth Comes to Wither via the full-album stream link below, but do consider pursuing your doomerly scholastic pursuits further via the artists’ links as well.
Do be sure to check out our additional Gallery of Brewicide article released earlier this week for this same gig!
It contains a whole heap of additional photography from none other than Ofir Gee of Noise Bleed, plus some footage taken on the night by yours truly.
Peace, Love and Malignant Authors - Brady.