Too much too soon?
Blackhole are a five piece hardcore outfit from the South of England, apparently with an average age of seventeen.
You’d like to be able to ignore the fact of their age but unfortunately you can’t. Aside from looking young their performance today just comes over as very amateurish. Singer Rich looks a little uncomfortable up on the stage, often preferring to stand side on to the crowd rather than getting into their faces and when he does front up he fails to deal very effectively with the heckling he gets. I don’t doubt that in the intimacy of a club show they are a force to be reckoned with but with the rest of the band at times looking like they’re just ambling around the stage they come over as out of their depth.
The music is good though, it’s nothing original certainly, very much in the Gallows/Ghost of a Thousand mould but they do a solid job of it. The dynamics are not bad and there’s plenty to work on but they really need to put their own stamp on the style if they’re going to stand out in a genre that’s already full of similar sounding outfits. I’d like to see them back next year with the extra experience that their heavy touring schedule will give them. Today though you just feel they’re not quite ready.