It’s obvious that Wheel know exactly who they are, choosing a name that couldn’t make their influences from Tool any more painfully obvious if they tried. The band’s mixture of explosive hard rock riffs with extended psychedelic jams and extremely technical musicianship is likely to be a tough sell to your average concert-goer: looking around Rescue Rooms on Thursday, it’s safe to say that that’s not who the band are marketing themselves toward. Wheel are a progressive metal band through-and-through, and Nottingham’s fans of the genre came out in force to see just how talented the group, as well as popular support act Monosphere, really are. Having experienced their syncopated rhythms and crushing choruses live, we can confirm that Wheel really do embody the genre, and put on a great show doing so.

Despite their frontman ensuring everyone that “we’re independent: it’s just the four of us,” Monosphere were sporting a shockingly well put-together live rig at Rescue Rooms, coming on-stage to a mixture of low drones and ominous shadows. The group’s light show, packed full of harsh neon colours and strobes timed perfectly with the riffs and breakdowns, was far more impressive than you would expect from a support act, giving each track a distinct visual flare and adding even more heft to an already intense set. Not unlike Wheel, Monosphere often transitioned between ambient passages of synths and clean guitars before building into increasingly vicious and earth-shattering breakdowns, helped out tremendously by Rescue Rooms’ small size and impeccable sound design. The group’s vocals, drawing heavily from modern metalcore, translated extremely well to the live setting as the harsh screams and gutturals only became more ominous and foreboding throughout, while the drums were in-your-face in every moment. The four-piece were also very much into their own music, with the drummer even standing to deliver some particularly anthemic fills and solos, and the set was a delightfully heavy and well-chosen start to the event.

It must be said, though, that the group’s over reliance on pre-recorded layers did affect our enjoyment somewhat, and left a bit of a bad taste in our mouths. In some instances, backing tracks are a sensible and even necessary tool: for harmonised vocals, for instance, Monosphere were completely justified in playing melodic singing through the PA to allow for screams overtop. In far too many others, however, the band could have done more to translate their sound into the live setting, with far too many clean guitar parts and even entire sections of ambience and singing being left entirely to pre-recorded tracks. If the band are keen to fill out many cuts with layers of synth, as is so popular in the modern metalcore scene, then they might benefit from recruiting a keyboard player, or else find a way to maintain more of that wild, spontaneous feel that fans crave from shows. As it stood, Monosphere put on a fun show on their first UK tour, but we can’t help but put a large asterisk on our praise.

By comparison, Wheel’s show was considerably stripped back and plain-looking, using little more than the house lights— this is more about the ‘live’ than the ‘show,’ putting the focus on the atmosphere and the musicianship above all else. At first, things weren’t really coming together as the band seemed a little stiff, still finding their place: opening cuts ‘Fugue’ and ‘Hyperion’ suffered as a result, even if they were still going down well with the group’s more diehard fans. While we’re on the negatives, we should also mention that the strobe lights were arguably overused through the set, becoming more blinding and irritating than immersive in their worst moments.

That stiffness never completely left the band’s demeanour, but rather settled in as a part of their act: frontman James Lascelles would often climb onto a box to play his guitar while staring dead into the crowd, adding an ominous air to many moments, while drummer Santeri Saksala spent much of the set with his eyes closed: an understandable move, given the technical wizardry he has to pull off every night. Turunen and Lehto were much more involved, bounding over to one another for some vigorous head-banging and engaging with the crowd at every opportunity. By its end, the show had quite an intimate atmosphere to it as Lascelles dropped his disconnected persona in favour of speaking charismatically, chatting to the audience quite non-seriously. 

Thankfully, the band certainly did find their groove as the set went on, and the show improved considerably after the opening run of tracks. ‘Skeletons,’ with its infectious melodic lines and driving rhythms, was the first bright spot in the set, marking the point that the group really won us over with their immaculate sound design. Lascelles’ vocals translated seamlessly, nailing both melodic singing and characterful fry screams without a hitch, while guest Jere Lehto’s bass playing had us spellbound as he pulled off increasingly mind-bending grooves with, seemingly, no effort at all. This, when combined with the octopus-like playing of drummer Santeri Saksala, gave many of the group’s tracks a deeply infectious groove, even when you couldn’t work out what time signature they were in, and the choruses were no less anthemic as guitarist Jussi Turunen was able to articulate so many memorable and soaring melodies beautifully. Wheel were able to translate the full-range of their sounds to the stage, excelling in both the soothing ambiences of ‘Dissipating’ or ‘Synchronise,’ as well the heavier riffs of ‘Vultures’ or their self-titled track, which went down particularly well with the metal-loving crowd. Really, the biggest issue was knowing when to head-bang to some of their most complicated, mind-boggling breakdowns!

Lascelles’ joke that “we’re headlining this time, which means we get to play more than four songs” perfectly sums up Wheel’s place at the centre of the progressive metal landscape. While we could criticise the band for putting on a somewhat underwhelming visual show, it feels much more appropriate to praise them for knowing exactly who’s watching them, and tailoring the experience as such. This show was about the atmosphere, the musicianship and, above all, the music, and we won’t deny how visceral and intimate of a performance it was.