Live Review: Narcotic Wasteland at The Black Heart, Camden, London (26/11/25)

It’s an extreme night in London, and while there are a ton of shows occurring across the city (as per usual), within the walls of The Black Heart there is plenty of excitement.

Excitement because US extreme metal outfit Narcotic Wasteland are in town as part of their UK run of their European tour. A gargantuan run that continues across the continent all the way into December.

This is no ordinary tour though. Narcotic Wasteland is the brainchild of former Nile guitarist Dallas Toler-Wade, and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Nile’s Annihilation of the Wicked, they are performing the two tracks Dallas originally composed, ‘The Burning Pits of the Duat’ and ‘Lashed to the Slave Stick’.

Both tracks sound great, getting one of the bigger pits going, and causing a flurry of heads to be banged. There’s just something about old-school Nile that just hits right, and Dallas’ vocals are so strong. Even with some dodgy sound issues (feedback and a muddy percussion), getting to bang my head to two classic Nile tracks in a venue this small is a highlight.

Though that’s not to underplay the quality of Narcotic Wasteland’s original music and how hard most of these tracks hit. There’s a reason why the tour is called ‘Annihilation of Europe’ (aside from the Nile stuff) and that’s because their aggression, intensity, rawness, and technical savagery hits like a sledgehammer to the back of the head. It’s extreme music lapped up by a hungry, and grateful, audience, and even though the show itself is pretty short (it’s over in less than an hour), its impact is felt long afterwards.

We don’t get to see Narcotic Wasteland over this way much, so it’s a shame that it wasn’t a packed-out show and we had the aforementioned sound issues. Regardless, the band stepped up and delivered a raucous and memorable set of metal music. Even without the Nile tracks, it was a good night of extreme heaviness, but when you throw in those two (as well as a thrilling Introspective Nightmares), it became one to remember.