The concert took place at Kruhnen Musik Halle, an amazing location near the center of Brasov. The concert was initially supposed to take place in the near by, smaller location Rockstadt but the limited capacity of the club made the event go sold out really fast. The organizer of the event received a lot of requests for additional tickets to be sold. The Rockstadt team is known worldwide for the annual festival with the same name and for hosting concerts with artists from different genres.
The love the Romanian public has for this band never fails to amaze me, in the same time in Bucharest the first day of a festival was taking place, bands like Vulture Industries or Shining took over the stage, yet a lot of people, including myself, sacrificed the festival to travel to Brasov to see Ne Obliviscaris. Hopefully, the band will appreciate this and visit Romania more often. The band was not only the headliner but the only band playing. No opening act, no guests , no nothing, and still the demand for the band was huge. For the new people Ne Obliviscaris is an original Australian band, with an Italian bass player and a French guitarist. They stand out from the rest of the bands that have come to my attention in the last years for there complex instrumental songs and unique blend of hash and clean vocals. They are a complex puzzle that needs every little piece to hold on strong, yet the big surprise of the night was that Xen, one of the vocalists, the growling master, was sick and couldn’t perform. The news was made public a couple hours before the beginning of the concert, along with the information that they will use a recording of his voice from a previous show. Everybody was worried about his well-being and in the same time disappointed, this being the first time the band was going to play the new album Urn, and also the first time, in Romania, with the new bass player Martino Garattoni. The concert started with Devour me colossus, a fans favorite from the previous album Citadel. The band had incredible energy and was interacting wonderful with the public. The recording of Xen’s voice was not loud enough to conquer over the instruments but to put it in Tim Charles own words, the other vocalist and violinist, “Xen’s spirit was with us.” All eyes were blown away when we were all way to impress, once again, by the perfect blending of the instruments, the missing piece of the puzzle was surely missed but his absent was not enough to ruin the perfect, strongly harmonized painting of sounds that this bands has manage to make over the years. The second song to fill our hearts was the egg shaker Intra venus, the first song to be released from the album Urn, by now the fans have all ready taking the role of the vocalist and where singing along without any hesitation. The public was well warmed up for the 4th song, Libera, the song has a part where fans actually sing on the track, surely the public was more than happy to get to do this live with the band.
From a sad event to a happy one, an older song, from the EP: The Aurora Veil was played, Forget Not, the band reintroduced this song in the playlist after being asked by a fan who used the song to propose to his girlfriend in the middle of the concert. The two songs that hold the same name of the album was next, Urn I and Urn II, leaving the encore to be the most complex and beautiful song ever made, And Plague Flowers The Kaleidoscope,this is the song that was studied at Sydney Conservatorium Of Music, if this is not proof that this men are making masterpieces I don’t know what is. All eyes at this point were on the new bass player he had big shoes to fill. All I can say is somebody needs to tell Martino Garattoni that the bass guitar is not a piano. A bit of back-up info, the band hosted an international bass-player audition and they selected Martino Garattoni, I have no idea what the other contestants were like, but they made the right choice.
An eventful concert but an amazing show, Ne Obliviscaris has the dedication and talent to become one of the most influential bands, hopefully they will keep up the good work and drop on us new albums just as breath taking as the ones before.
Photos taken from the bands official facebook page
