Fagerlund's reviews

First out on this evening was The Curse, described as "newly formed all star Stockholm Death Metal". Indicating that the members are somewhat well-known... I think I recognized the vocalist (don't know from where though), but not the other guys. And with a generic name like that it's kind of hard to find any information about these guys... so if anyone happens to know who they are, I'd be glad to hear it!

Anyhow, you could tell from the start that these guys obviously knew what they were doing. Despite pretty bad sound at the start they simply let it rip. They had an amazing drummer, who really drove the band and add to that crushing yet pretty groovy riffing with really deep guttural vocals and you should get a decent picture of how they sound. They had two speeds, fast and super-fast. And there's that. Stockholm Death Metal is a good description really, certainly some Bloodbath vibes in there among other things. Damn solid in either case.

 

Another Stockholm Death Metal band, doing their first gig. So this band also has rather well-known members... or at least they've played in some well-known bands as live musicians if nothing else. Meaning they're excellent musicians. Most noteworthy has to be Fredrik Widigs (Demonical, Witchery etc) on the drums however. I have rarely seen someone look so relaxed while playing so damn fast. I have seen him before in Demonical, but this time the drum set was really close so I could actually see him. And damn. In the second song he broke a drum stick... he didn't even miss a beat while calmly replacing it. Was pretty crazy to see!

The rest of the band also performed really solidly, churning out Death Metal with more than a little touch of At the Gates I think. I didn't quite get into as much as The Curse, but definitely a really nice opening act. And this was their first gig ever... so I can only assume they'll become even better after a few shows!

 

Fourth time I see these guys, and always a pleasure. For those who didn't know, this was the release-party for their latest album End of Disclosure that was released the same day. And in Tägtgrens own words, it was a bit "shaky" to perform this new set. You couldn't really tell that from where I stood though... so the second guitar player lost track in the middle of a song or two, and Tägtgren broke a string in the second last song... but I mean, nothing big. What was big however, was the change in setlist. Only five songs remained from the last tour - other than that they played only new songs and songs they've rarely played before! It was actually a quite strange set, but certainly refreshing for me having seen them quite some times before. Quite odd that not a single song from A Taste of Extreme Divinity made it into the set though, but I think I prefer the surprises anyway! Extra welcome was of course the extra un-planned encore. It's not often you get those these days!

I guess that tells you the crowd was in a pretty good mood. I mean, we did manage to call them back on stage at least! So a pretty nice, but not overcrowded atmosphere. You basically had your space, while people were still into it. Just how I like it.

One thing that was a little bit disappointing though was the lighting. Because last tour they had amazing lights that looked awesome, so I kind of expected something more this time as well. It wasn't bad, not at all, it was just... standard. So it's not a complaint, I just had very high expectations on that part.

So, a lot of new songs in the set. I was silly and forgot to pick up the album while there (it's not easy remembering stuff when you focus to not fall over from headbanging you know...)... but from what I could tell of the songs they played live it sounds very promising. It's probably not a mistake that A Taste... was left out of the set, because the new songs seem to have more in common with those older albums. I certainly don't mind.

Overall a really great show. And also worth of note, this breaks the "seven years between shows"-pattern Hypocrisy used to have for playing live in Sweden... let's hope that's a change that's here to stay!

 

 

Setlist:

End of Disclosure
The Tale of Thy Spineless
Fractured Millennium
Left to Rot
The Eye
Abyss
Fire in the Sky
Necronomicon
Buried
United We Fall
44 Double Zero
Elastic Inverted Vision
Warpath

Roswell 47
Adjusting the Sun
Eraser

Fearless