Birmingham’s Supersonic is one of the great British festivals to have emerged in the last decade: a bastion of independence, mixing the avant-garde with the best of heavy music. This year, organisers Capsule have been kind enough to bring some of the acts down south. The first of two Supersonic shows (the second being Italian legends Goblin), tonight brings together three acts of huge cult appeal in their respective fields.

First up are The Accused, a pioneering 80s thrash band whose music crossed over many metal sub-genres and helped to influence future crust and grind bands in the coming years. Tonight, they’re on fine form, vocalist Brad Mowen stalking the stage with a consistently strong rhythm section providing the support guitarist Tommy Niemeyer needs for his razor-sharp riffs and scorching solos.

Next up is Thorr’s Hammer, a very exciting prospect as the band has been inactive for the last 14 years. Formed by Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson who went on to form Burning Witch and progressive doom trailblazers Sunn O))), Thorr’s Hammer slither their way through a series of glacial movements from their one and only EP. Norwegian frontwoman Runhild Gammelsæter is unnervingly smiley for a woman that roars her way through some of the most antisocial-sounding but morbidly spellbinding noise imaginable.

Finally, it’s time for Corrupted, a reclusive Japanese band that helped spawn the sub-sub-genre of funeral doom. This is doom, typically a Black Sabbath-influenced style of metal favouring slow tempos, taken to its extreme. Compared to Corrupted, the majority of doom seems positively speedy; in an eighty minute set, I counted roughly two and a half songs. For the people gathered at The Scala tonight, the music is mesmerising.

Building hypnotically from skeletal melodic instrumentation, the music evolves at a snails pace into searing white noise with frontman Hevi’s mix of delicate spoken word and drawn-out grunts acting as another texture rather than an intrusive focal point. This is the first time Corrupted have ever come to the UK and after eighty minutes of stunned silence, the entire audience explodes with cheering and applause. It was well worth the wait.