Fans of ethereal soul singer Celeste were given a hair-raising surprise as they travelled 100 miles to see her live – only to find out they had booked tickets to a death metal band with the same name.

The five women had meant to see Celeste Epiphany Waite, a Brighton-raised and velvet-voiced songstress who takes inspiration from the smoky jazz clubs she heard through her grandfather’s tapes of Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald.

But when they turned up they found a group of French extreme avant-gard rockers who are notorious for their ‘face-melting’ tracks – merging black metal, sludge metal and post-hardcore to create a devastating wall of sound.

The Liverpudlian ladies had travelled to The Asylum in Birmingham for the gig and even booked a hotel to stay at as they hoped to make the most of their evening out.

When the ball finally dropped when they found themselves in a sparse crowd of aging metalheads, they left the bearded headbangers delighted as they made the most of their mix-up.

One laughing onlooker, called Alex, made unlikely friends with the group – saying ‘I thought they were brilliant’. 

They astonished the crowd by making it to ten minutes before the end before heading off for the rest of the night – having watched a full hour of the set.

He joked: ‘Until tonight I was not aware that there is a popular singer called Celeste. 

‘Until tonight, 5 lovely women from Liverpool weren’t aware that there is a French avant-garde post-hardcore, post-black metal band called Celeste. 

‘Sadly for them I was not the one at the wrong gig.’

He continued: ‘I described the band’s sound and said they might not like it – fair play to them – they stayed and watched almost all of it and clapped and cheered loudly which was very welcome in a sadly very sparsely attended gig.’

Soulful Celeste, 30, soared to fame as she took home the Brit Award for Rising Star of 2020, also being named the number one breakthrough act BBC Music Sound of 2020 List.

Tracks including Strange, A Little Love – which was used on that year’s John Lewis advert – and Stop This Flame have millions of views for her earthy tones and the cinematic glamour of her sound.

Made up of Johan Girardeau, Guillaume Rieth, Antoine Royer and Sébastien Ducotté, the group have been together since 2005 on the Lyon hardcore punk scene.

The metal group have also been praised by reviewers for making their music ‘less chaotic and more refined’.

One writer said that listening to their improved tunes is now ‘like I’m wading through semi-viscous sludge of tar and pitch’.

A piece for Veil of Sound reads: ‘It’s always been face-melting, but now it’s with surgical precision rather than through brute and relentless force. 

‘If anything, they’ve replaced the ’emo violence’ influences of their earlier releases with something less chaotic and more refined. Post-black metalcoreamo, perhaps?’

Videos from the night show the four men wearing red headtorches as they thrash their guitars through a wall of smoke.

The long-haired guitarists thrash their heads as the drummer pounds his set, with the singer letting loose a guttural growl. 

Their hits, including Torrents of Blows, Dredged At The Bottom and Of Your Pearl Blue Eyes have also delighted listeners, gaining them almost 15,000 followers on Instagram.

The group have busily shared their fans’ posts as they were left in hysterics by the mix-up.

The bassist for one of the opening acts, Greif Ritual, added that it is a ‘fun story to tell’. 

And the ladies went on to prove their metal credentials by going out on the town for a night out following the gig – while the concert-goers who intended to go to the show were back home in bed by 10pm. 

Alex continued: ‘They were pure class. Most people would have thought oh s**t and left straight away and not told a complete stranger about their cock up but they had a laugh and it was great to meet them.’

He said: ‘They arrived about 15 mins before the headliners came on and were asking me all sorts and where they could go after to listen to something they could dance to.

‘They were also asking me if I was *sure* the area I’d recommended they go to after would be lively on a Tuesday night (Broad Street in Birmingham). 

‘I said ‘it’s heavy-police-presence-every-night lively’ and they all went ‘WAHEEEEYYY!!!”

British-Jamaican Celeste joined the likes of Adele, Ellie Goulding and Haim when she topped the BBC Sound of 2020 list.

Born in Los Angeles but raised in Brighton, her career started as a teenager when she started making music alongside working in pubs and charity shops. 

She moved to London in 2017 with just £100 to her name – before getting fired because she would skip work to write songs. 

Now turns out that the girls from Liverpool were not the only ladies to make the same mistake – with one commenter saying that his cousin and four of her friends also travelled from Manchester for the show.

In texts between them, she laughed: ‘So turns out it is not Celeste playing tonight. It is CELESTE… a French heavy metal band.’

She added: ‘Can’t believe it. Genuinely haven’t stopped laughing,’ before saying that she and her pals were going to make the most of a night in Birmingham despite their mistake.

Another said: ‘My friend is in a black metal band and knows someone in the support act from London who said the exact same thing happened there with more than one person/group!!’

And metal band Sugar Horse said there were further mix-ups when they supported Celeste in the capital. They commented: ‘This also happened at our recent London show with them. Bless those folks.’