10 Best Heavy Metal Live Bands Of 2018

Live performances are the lifeblood of heavy metal. In a world where albums are increasingly unprofitable, it’s the best way for an artist to earn their keep. And for the fans, seeing your favourite artist live is a rite of passage: an experience that affirms your love for the band in question by letting you get up close and personal with not just their music, but their visual element and mannerisms.

Ergo, as 2018 begins to draw to a close, it feels right to honour those extreme bands that have really gone above and beyond when crafting their own live shows. The ten names in this list are all massively different from one another, but the common thread here is that they are all heavy, all more than worthy of the entry price and all put as much effort as humanly possible into putting on an excellent show.

Whether it’s a brutal black metal extravaganza, a cavalcade of prog-inspired technicality, an armada of bruising hardcore or an upbeat party of joyous melodies is irrelevant. The point is, every group here is a must-watch for any metalhead that frequents their local music venues.

(NB: Any band that made it into our “10 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Live Bands of 2017” list is disqualified from inclusion this year, because repetition is boring.)

What a year Trivium have had! By 2017, a lot of fans had written the band off entirely after Vengeance Falls and Silence in the Snow – consecutive albums that saw the band eschew their metalcore roots in favour of clean-cut arena rock. Then, that October, the quartet wowed with The Sin and the Sentence, which resurrected and improved upon the Trivium of old with its raging heaviness, skilled musicianship and varying dynamics.

The subsequent tour to promote this almighty comeback hit British shores in April 2018. Their support acts were three of the best up-and-comers that modern heavy metal has to offer: Code Orange, Power Trip and Venom Prison. Together, the openers made for such a brutal trio that the London show had to be stopped three times due to pit-related tomfoolery. It was such an awe-inspiring display that many presumed Trivium would be upstaged by their own warm-up.

But no. If anything, the presence of such young and hungry performers upped Trivium’s game as well, imbuing them with enough grace and energy to complement their powerful set-list.

Evidently, the key to a great live show isn’t hard. You just need to make great music and pay attention to your own genre’s underground.