earthtone9 bring fellow Nottingham-based band The Five Hundred to London for the 25th anniversary of ArcTanGent, in an evening where meditative melodies collide with wrenching heaviness and the force of the present beats out the enticing grip of nostalgia.
25 years ago, earthtone9, the British Alternative Metal band that almost rose to the top, released their cult-classic album ArcTanGent. So iconic is this album that not only has it had a festival named after it, but it is also considered to be one of the greatest British Metal records of that era. earthtone9 were the antidote to the late nineties surge in “nookie” Nu-Metal, and their seminal third album, ArcTanGent, was the vessel.
earthtone9 – The Five Hundred
Downstairs At The Dome, London – 8 November 2025
Words: Lucy Dunnet
Photography: Matt Pratt
But before delving into the world of ArcTanGent, The Five Hundred have some business of their own to attend to. They bring with them a devout fanbase – some of whom woke up at 9am to be here and some of whom are dressed to the nines in outfits reserved solely for the Progressive Metalcore quintet’s shows. 
We last caught them in the EMP stage at Bloodstock, where they bent the daylight hours to their will in front of a rammed tent of enthusiastic festival goers. Tonight’s intense haze and flickering shadows befit The Five Hundred’s ghostly strain of Metalcore, awash with as many silky melodies as it is ferocious breakdowns.
Vocalist John Woods-Eley never gives up encouraging the crowd forward, and his vigour is rewarded with some committed headbanging and a small but mighty wall of death. He even breaks into Freddie Mercury vocal warmups mid-set, which are sung back to him with impressive vitality. What is also impressive is the band’s ability to full-body headbang in complete unison, apart from drummer Kelsey James, whose mystique comes from the fact that he remains clouded in an atmospheric fog for most of the set. 
Having been a band for over 10 years, The Five Hundred do not lack in the hook-laden, sing-along department. But it is some of their newest material, released earlier this year, such as The Death Of All We Know, Rainmaker, and New World, that really strikes a chord with the crowd. Londoners! Tonight, we headbang in hell! Move over 300, The Five Hundred is your next numerical obsession with their catchy-as-hell music ready to be artfully woven into every crevice of your life.
From the Industrial Revolution to rumours that Mr Karl Middleton spends his spare time creating more spare time, the vocalist is welcomed onto the stage in a speech as dry-humoured and off-kilter as he is. Guitarists Joe Roberts and Owen Packard make up the core trio, with Jay Walsh bringing up the rear on drums.
Tonight, earthtone9 may have agreed to play ArcTanGent in full for its quarter-century birthday, but they said nothing about playing it in order. And so it is that they kick off the set with Evil Crawling I, a pulsating crash of heaviness and unearthly timbre that infuses the crowd with a feverous need to move. 
Bashing through Approx. Purified and PRD Chaos, it doesn’t take long for Karl to remark on the “fuck load” of energy in the room, and that clearly someone has brought along their children – we are celebrating 25 years of their cult-classic album, after all. The moshers in the front do indeed span generations, speaking to the timeless – albeit nuanced – appeal of some of Nottingham’s greatest alternative noiseblazers.
There is nothing performative about earthtone9: the way they move, the way they play, and the way they exist onstage is like stumbling upon inventors caught in a deeply creative trance. Even when he stops to gulp on his water bottle, Karl seems caught between an interpretive dance move and a snake impression. They transcend their artist roles into a physical embodiment of the comfortingly jarring, boundary-slashing music. 
Karl announces they are going to play three songs from earthtone9’s 2024 release, In Resonance Nexus, which injects not just the crowd with renewed fire, but the band as well. As much as this tour is about remembering the album, of such daunting critical acclaim that it ripped wide open expectations and desires a mere three years into the band’s existence, it is also multiple nights of opportunity to rock out hard to songs that have only been bringing sweat to brows for over a year.
Against the razor blade white lights illuminating the stage, earthtone9 close the night with the final ArcTanGent track, Binary 101, followed by its opener, Tat Twam Asi. Hugs in the pit and drinks spilled onto stage wires are the only thing grounding the crowd from being dragged into the hypnotic holes earthtone9 always manage to open up. 
