Kenyan artist Lord Spikeheart delivers a relentless and physical live show where death metal growls, rap and club music collide in a high-energy frontal impact. As one half of the now-defunct extreme metal duo Duma, he delivered one of the most ferocious concerts in ALICE’s history back in 2022. This March, Lord Spikeheart returns to take over our concert hall with a show that hits the moshpit and the dancefloor in equal measure. The experimental guitarist Emil Palme will open the night.

Over the past decade, Kenyan vocalist, songwriter and producer Martin Kanja – better known as Lord Spikeheart – has emerged as one of the most striking voices in African extreme music. Many will recognize him as one half of the Nairobi-based metal force Duma, now disbanded, but under his solo moniker Lord Spikeheart has developed an even more radical and personal expression. His music fuses death metal growls, piercing screams and rap into a high-energy hybrid that speaks equally to the moshpit and the dancefloor. In other words, Lord Spikeheart pushes the boundaries of what metal, rap and club music can be in 2026.

His debut album “The Adept”, released on his own label HAEKALU, was met with widespread international acclaim and was named one of The Guardian’s Top 10 Global Albums of 2024. The album was praised for its fearless, boundary-pushing vision by outlets such as Pitchfork, BBC Radio, The Quietus and Resident Advisor, cementing Lord Spikeheart as an artist opening new pathways for extreme and experimental music – from East Africa to stages around the world. In 2025, he followed up with the EP “REIGN”, where industrial textures, death metal, grindcore, African rhythmic traditions and club energy merge into an intense and cohesive sound. We can’t wait for Lord Spikeheart to take over ALICE this March!

Emil Palme
The experimental guitarist Emil Palme opens the evening for Lord Spikeheart. Using the guitar as a ritual instrument – played with self-made bows of stone – Palme conjures hypnotic patterns in the hazy borderland between composition and improvisation. His music draws on Scandinavian folklore, doom and neo-classical textures, feeling both ancient and strikingly contemporary at the same time. His latest album Death by angel is a dark requiem inspired by mythological ideas of the angel of death as a guide between worlds. Here, dissonance and beauty meet in slow-moving passages that gesture toward both collapse and redemption. A melancholic, otherworldly opening that sets the stage for an evening centered on intensity and transformation.