Live Rituals: Blackbraid, Lamp of Murmuur, Dödsrit

Blackbraid, Lamp of Murmuur, Dödsrit
Brick by Brick, San Diego, CA
September 18, 2025

The San Diego night pressed down like a wet leather jacket, thick with a gauzy humidity that clung to your skin and filled the air with the scent of asphalt and vapes. By the time the sun dropped, Brick by Brick was already alight with headbangers in full siege. Fans crammed inside as the first openers were still tuning their instruments while the merch line twisted deep into the back room, hands clutching shirts and vinyl like relics. Blackbraid’s first headlining North American tour had finally arrived, and the atmosphere coursed with the tingly sort of electricity that tends to accompany make-or-break moments.

Dödsrit had the Herculean task of initiating the chaos but you wouldn’t have known it from the reception. This was the Swedes’ first ever appearance on U.S. soil, and they delivered a set that was short, sharp, and unsparing. No corpsepaint, no theatrics—just a blitz of propulsive riffs that blurred the line between blackened hardcore urgency and the epic sweep of Scandinavian black metal.

Lamp of Murmuur followed, beginning with two relatively restrained numbers before erupting. When the pit finally cracked open, bodies collided like atoms under a particle accelerator. Their sound—part goth-inflected menace, part tempo-shifting maelstrom—rode the pulse of a thunderous Rickenbacker bass. There was a touch of Tribulation’s velvet gloom in the atmosphere, but filtered through a more primal lens. By the time they hit full stride, it was clear they weren’t here to warm up the crowd; they were here to set it ablaze.

And then it happened. The lights dimmed, the house buzzed with feral expectation, and Blackbraid stormed the stage like wolves breaking from the treeline. This is their first headlining tour, and it already feels overdue. The hype around Blackbraid III has not relented—critics (myself included) have gushed over it, and Merlin at Metal Hammer threw gasoline on the fire with his own rapture, hailing Blackbraid’s latest as "One of the best metal albums of 2025 so far - extreme or otherwise.". Tonight was the test: could Blackbraid meet the weight of myth that’s been building around them? The answer was immediate and violent: yes, and then some.

Led by founder and frontman Sgah’gahsowáh, they ripped into “Wardrums at Dawn on the Day of My Death” like it was a call to arms, each blastbeat a hammerfall, each scream a blade through the steam-thick air. The setlist was a cross-section of their catalog, from the feral roots of I and II to the sprawling ambition of III. “The Wolf That Guides the Hunters Hand” seethed with predatory precision, while “Moss Covered Bones on the Altar of the Moon” — complete with Sgah’gahsowáh on flute — stretched like a ritual chant echoing across the forest floor. When they hit “God of Black Blood,” the entire crowd joined Sgah’gahsowáh in screaming the strangled roars that open the song—a deafening showcase of allegiance.

The new material carried even greater weight live. Where the album finds space for acoustic respite and ancestral echoes, the stage distilled those elements into raw force. If III hinted at classic metal’s grandeur, live it came off like an adrenaline shot of stadium-sized confidence—tempos spiked, riffs snarled, and every breakdown landed like an axe.

Blackbraid’s live presence is not about chatter; Sgah’gahsowáh speaks through the music alone, and it’s all the more powerful for it. The jams were ferocious, the tempo shifts merciless, and the energy never dipped. By the time they closed with “Barefoot Ghost Dance on Blood Soaked Soil,” the room was less a crowd than a rampaging horde—sweat-drenched, throat-raw, and utterly spent.

Blackbraid have graduated from rising star to full-blown headliner, and they’ve done it without compromise. Their fusion of tradition and innovation is reshaping what American black metal looks like in 2025, and this tour is proof that the storm they’ve conjured on record can—and does—consume a room whole.

Eighteen shows remain on this run. Miss it, and you’ll regret it.