Music Macabre 2000.

When I am driving a dark road, I am a man who drives alone :-) Yes, my friends, you guessed it right - once again nobody was willing to accompany me in my neverending quest for Metal. Well, so be it, but I had no any intention to miss this exceptional show whether I had to go with other people or by myself. It was my first time in Phantasy (disregarding cancelled Mayhem show), and I liked the atmosphere inside the club, as there are a lot of places where you can hide from the crowd if the appropriate mood occurs. The thing that I did not like was that turnout for the show was not good at all, almost at any given moment it seemed like half of the people in front of the stage were bands' members or their friends. It's certainly nice that musicians supported each other so fiercely, but what the hell happened to all the people I've seen during the major events?! What a shame... Another thing that was kind of difficult to withstand was the longevity of the concert - more than 8 hours!!! OK, now it's time to talk about the guilty parties, and we will start with LOSERS (probably not for life, but definitely during this show). First of all, it was Blood Coven whose set was very damn boring. I heard that they specifically reunited for this particular show (afraid it's not gonna be the only one they play), and some people were quite happy to see them back. Definitely not me. They play Unholy Death Metal not unlike Krisiun and all those other bands I can not stand. Very fast and brutal although not as technically proficient as the aforementioned Brazilians (although I think Blood Coven are more emotional than Krisiun). They did slow down the pace more than once, but the slower sections did not sound any better than the rest of their music. Dual vocals use did not really enhance their sound either. All in all, very boring and uninteresting although I've seen much worse. Second band that I did not enjoy at all was The Vladimirs from Cincinnati. This is not Metal, folks. I am not saying it as a sentence of death, I'm just letting you know that they play hardcore/punk in the vein of Green Day, Offspring, Bad Religion or any other band on the Epitaph Records. Don't get me wrong, I like this kind of music if it's done the right way with some talent deposited into the songcraft, just listen to the latest Pyogenesis opus! However, it's not the case with The Vladimirs whose songs lack any memorable hooks, which is absolutely necessary for this kind of music. Maybe part of the problem was that sound during their set was simply horrible, I dunno. OK, now it's time to move to our NOT SO BAD part. I don't know if it's only a coincidence, but I did not fully enjoy 2 bands that happened to close the show. First of all, Chicago's Avernus played pretty good, but somewhat lacking set of traditional Doom/Death Metal. Unfortunately, all the songs tended to sound a little bit the same Novembers Doom Taken from http://www.novembersdoom.com and were longer than they actually had to be, even though they tried to change tempo every once in a while. I know that Doom songs are not supposed to be 3 minutes long with nice happy riffs, and, actually, I am a sucker for some good, long monotonous Doom :-), but they definitely crossed the line here. All in all, not a bad performance, but my tiredness and their stubbornness made it sound a bit annoying :-). Damn, I hate to say it, but this time Somnus did not quite live up to my expectations. They were honored to headline this show, but eventually it turned out to be a negative thing for them. It was yet another of those 'instrumental' shows that I dislike so much, but, every once in a while, have to be exposed to. No voices could be heard whatsoever, and it certainly did not help their cause. At least I bought a T-shirt of a normal size this time! For those of you hungry for details, their set consisted of the following songs: 'Unfulfilled Prophecy', 'The Deceiver', 'Within', 'Dawn of the Spirits' (this is the right name!), 'Forever the Serpent' and 'Alchemist' (encore). WINNERS. First of all, hails to Cincinnati for having 3 cool bands and only 1 bad one! Elusive Travel were first band to play that evening and impressed me quite a bit. Fast and furious at times, and very calm and laid back at others, it is very difficult to categorize their music. For my part, I definitely heard some Gothic and Black influences, but their ways are not limited to these two styles. I also picked up their 2-song promo tape, which is not bad at

all, so keep an eye on them! Oh yeah, here comes the comparison part: old Burzum, Bethlehem and old and new Katatonia, how about that?! Thorns of the Carrion used to play slow, mournful, heavy Doom as evidenced by their old material, but newer songs seem to shift a little bit into the Black/Death direction. Interesting thing about them is that their primary vocalist is their drummer and, by the way, they are a family enterprise, having in their ranks 3 people with the last name Thomas. They sounded pretty good live with alternating clean and growling vocals, but sound seems to be kind of thin on the CD-R that I got, and considering they have been going for 7 years now, they should push it a little bit further if they wanna get a record deal. Finally, the last band from the Southern part of our state: Estuary of Calamity. They started out with pretty lame attempt at ripping Death/Black Metal with occasional keyboard passages. Lame because songs sounded very forgettable and their fast nature tended to blend all instruments in one indistinguishable blur. But as their set continued, every next song was better than the previous one, until the synopsis came in the form of the very last song. Great guitar melodies accompanied by very memorable keyboard line and live flute! This last song easily kicked both Thyrfing and Mithotyn's asses, and I thought nobody could top them in this particular substyle of sweet folksy melodic Metal. After such a treat I certainly had to buy their self-released CD, but I have not been able to check it out yet, so I will let you know later if it's something you should seek out or not. Evoken from the state of New Jersey played only 3 songs, but if you take into account that all of them are around 10 minutes long then you will understand why it happened. Funeral Doom at its best, that's what their music is about! They made Thorns of the Carrion and even Skepticism (did not play that night) look like some light-hearted power metal heroes! :-) VERY slow and heavy, I think there are actually 2 words that could make them justice: Rain Fell Taken from http://www.rainfellwithin.com crushing and choking. Yes, a funny thing happened to me during their set (funny for you, but not for me!). The thing is that I was sitting right beside the speakers, and during the second song where sound somehow became even lower than it was during the first composition, the damn speaker started to tremble so badly that it quickly passed that shaking to my bowels and lungs and thus I started coughing like crazy! Talk about the deadly music! It was my first time witnessing mighty Novembers Doom playing live in Cleveland and sure as hell I liked what I saw! If you still don't know shit about ND, please make yourself a favor and check them out. I won't say they are unique or one of the kind, because they are not, but you should know that they put their hearts in what they do and they do it the right way. Great Doom/Death, which does not need any keyboards to invoke feelings of pure sadness and despair. They played several songs from their brand new 'The Knowing' album, which is out on Dark Symphonies right now! By the way, first 2000 copies are packaged in a very cool slipcase and also include free mini-poster, so if you hurry up maybe you can still catch it. KINGS OF THE HILL: Rain Fell Within. I don't know why I thought that they play some kind of darkwave, non-metal music!? Actually, a long while ago I checked one of their songs online and was not really impressed. What was I on, you will ask me? Well, I have no idea, so keep on inquiring... :-) What they perform in reality is both guitar AND keyboard driven melodic Metal with great, strong female vocals sung by 'beautiful Dawn' :-) Mostly midtempo, but not monotonous at all. Even though Dawn had real problems with her microphone to the point where I could only hear few words here and there (and I was standing only several feet away), I still enjoyed their songs a whole damn lot. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I can not compare them to anybody else, because the sound is quite unique (or maybe my knowledge of Metal is not that good :-))). They played the majority of songs from their debut 'Believe' and I even think that they treated us to one new song, but I would not bet on this one. So once again, please go airborne and check them out! Andy.