Hello,
And you thought that I was gone for good, ah? You thought that when I
wrote 'The Last Advance' I really meant it?! Shame on you! ...It was a
nice Wednesday evening, and it was time for yet another exhausting, but
very desirable trip to Flying Machine, where the first exciting show of
the new year was to take place (sorry, but I don't consider S.O.D. show
to be exciting at all). When we finally arrived to the place of bestial
summoning (haha!), it was practically empty, not counting very few
metalheads standing here and there outside the club - something I,
actually, pretty much expected considering that no FEAR FACTORY played
on that day. Now it was time for a couple of long-expected surprises (I
Immortal
Taken from http://sh55k01.jvb.tudelft.nl/html/immortal.htm
know it sounds absurd, but let me explain). First of all, once again we
bought our tickets from SOMNUS' member, this time it was their beautiful
keyboard player, who even said that we rocked (sometimes it's not that
easy to sell tickets in the parking lot, you know). This remark made me
bold enough to ask her if she was from SOMNUS (like I did not know that
already!), and then murmur something like 'You are cool', which must
have sounded pretty funny :-) Anyway, second 'surprise' was not that
nice, as show started at 8.30 instead of 7.30, and considering that it
was in the middle of the week (I, personally, was supposed to have an
exam next morning) some people felt a little bit upset about this
'little' letdown. However, as soon as we got inside and SOMNUS started
to play, bad mood instantly disappeared without a trace. Holy Thorr's
Hammer, are they good or what?! Every time I see them, they only seem to
sound better and better, even though their setlist more or less remains
the same. In the light of everything that was said before, it was a
definite shame that people did not really pay a lot of attention to one
of the best local bands, instead opting to hang out in the bar or simply
come late to see only more well known bands. In the beginning, I was the
only one who was headbanging to their interesting blend of melodic
doom/death/black metal, but, fortunately, later on few more people
joined me. I am also very glad to inform you that I'm not the only one
who believes in SOMNUS (count Paul Kuhr from Novembers Doom in too), as
their debut CD 'Awakening the Crown' was finally released through
Root-O-Evil Records and is available through some good underground
companies (Dark Symphonies). FROM THE DEPTHS played next, and their set
was partially shaded by some technical problems. First it was microphone
that did not work, then something happened to one of their guitars; and
for a second it even seemed that their main man (who, considering he is
a guitarist/vocalist of a METAL band, was complaining way too much) was
ready to call it a day, but, finally, everything was more or less fixed.
I have to say that a celebration of the pseudo new Millennium did hurt
FROM THE DEPTHS quite a bit, as in the process of this celebration they
somehow lost their session keyboardist and now play as a four-piece.
Anyway, it was a pretty good set of aggressive black/death metal which
was rounded out with, no, not METALLICA's 'Creeping Death', but some
KREATOR song which I never heard before, but nevertheless enjoyed quite
a bit. I could simply say that KRISIUN sucked and it would be a just
enough review for their part of the show, but for the sake of being fair
I will go into more details and describe what exactly I did not like
about them. Brutal and hyperfast death metal is the name of the game
here, and this game is just not right. I always thought that music is
supposed to possess some kind of melody, but it appears that guys from
KRISIUN totally disagree with me, as their music possesses everything,
but melody. Some can say that it's brutal metal and thus discussions
about melody are just irrelevant, but I say, think MAYHEM, LIMBONIC ART
or SIX FEET UNDER. Are they brutal? Yes, they are! Does their music
possess melody? Hell yeah! Anyway, returning to KRISIUN, they proved
that they are fast, but they also proved that they are monotonous,
boring and uninspired and can not write a single memorable song. As for
the people craving for ultimate brutality, I can recommend you hitting
your head against the wall - this is REALLY brutal and should help you
to stay away from the
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mindless music for a little while. Oh yeah, one
plus for guys from KRISIUN: nice hair, dudes! ANGEL CORPSE was next, and
the first thing that I thought was: 'KRISIUN #2???' My second thought
was that maybe it was MORBID ANGEL #3 (KRISIUN being the second one)???
Anyway, the only differences between two bands were that ANGEL CORPSE
had two guitarists in their line-up and that two guys in ANGEL CORPSE
had shaved heads. These two bands are so similar, it does not really
surprise me that they like each other's music so much. Well, I guess it
should not then surprise you that I did not like ANGEL CORPSE just as
much as I did not enjoy KRISIUN. Equipment setup for IMMORTAL set took
about 30 minutes... I must say, that quite a while ago I have noticed an
ironic thing about this issue: the more technicians you see onstage, the
more time it will take them to set everything up. Anyway, IMMORTAL came
in and crushed everything and everyone in the building - plain and
Satyricon
Taken from www.moonfog.no
simple. I had not liked this band in the past, that is until that point
in time that I heard their (then) new album 'At the Heart of Winter'.
Some of you already know, that any given song from that album easily
outweighs anything this band had done before (we are talking 4 LP's
here) and thus it was an appropriate choice for them to kick off with
both 'Withstand the Fall of Time' and 'Solarfall', which feature almost
perfect blend of heaviness, melody and speed (Are you listening
KRISIUN???). One more new song that was played was 'Years of Silent
Sorrow'. They also played quite a few of older tunes, which I enjoyed
almost as much as newer material, but it was quite evident that older
songs do not possess as much feeling or memorable hooks as new stuff, as
they all tended to sound a little bit alike. It also has to be noted,
that although IMMORTAL played only as a three-piece, their sound and
tightness were top-notch, making a lot of bands with bigger line-ups
sound like a bunch of schoolboys. Outstanding! SATYRICON was about to
play next; as for me, I had to leave my place in front of the stage and
retreat into the tables area as both five-hour stand on the same spot
and annoying music of ANGEL CORPSE and KRISIUN tired me big time. I was
not really sure what to expect from SATYRICON as far as live show is
concerned, as their brand of black metal is not the easiest to play
live, plus after the devastating set played by IMMORTAL it would be
difficult for just about anybody to get the exhausted crowd going. Well,
SATYRICON did get some people excited, but for the most part their part
of the gig was quite disappointing. Probably it was difficult for a band
with only two core members to play as a six-piece (Satyr was only
singing/screaming and they had two session guitar players as well as a
female keyboardist playing some pretty weak synths). Maybe the mix was
not right that night (although it was very good during IMMORTAL set).
Maybe something else affected SATYRICON's playing abilities, but the
sound just was not there. To me their music mostly sounded like a wall
of noise in which you could hardly distinguish way too distorted
guitars, a lot of bottom end (KORN's ghost was once again spotted in the
building), and occasional feeble synths somewhere in the background.
Choice of the songs played was not the best possible either, to say the
least. They opted, almost exclusively, to play songs from their latest
CD and MCD, while totally ignoring the rest of their catalog (only two
songs from the 'Nemesis Divina' were played, with 'Mother North'
sounding VERY wrong). In the end they decided to play an encore, but the
majority of people was, seemingly, quite disappointed with their very
average performance and thus chose to leave instead of staying in the
club for another 5 minutes. Considering it was around 2.15 in the
morning, and SATYRICON'S show was pretty damn far from being
groundbreaking, it was only a logical choice for me to follow the
leaders and, finally, dive into the night...
P.S. We did take some pictures this time, so I really hope that we will
be able to show them on the site in the near future.
Andy.
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