What’s the best part about being a metal fan?
Is it the strong sense of community? Is it that feeling of anarchic freedom whenever you hear your favourite riff or solo? Is it the wicked lifestyle of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll?
Well, at a live show, you can find all this and more. There’s no better feeling than being surrounded by the people like you, head-banging wildly while some of the most cerebral music ever created is blasting out at full volume, with your favourite rockstars standing on a stage just metres from you.
This was the start of the 6th December evening.
Support acts of the night came from the romanian metalheads W3 4R3 NUM83R5 and TWIST OF FATE, who gathered a relatively small crowd in the venue, excited for the show to come.TWIST OF FATE started the evening with full force. Crunchy rhythm guitars and shout vocals dominate, as drums powered alongside them.
W3 4R3 NUM83R5 were next, and this was a good thing because they are a good live band, whose raison d’être is to get people headbanging.
W3 4R3 NUM83R5 is a Romanian Metalcore band from Brasov and a follow-up of the deceased Deliver The God project, due to the fact that there are three former members (Alinesku, Cristi and Silviu) who continued with a more melodic musical approach, the style being a melodic metalcore. For the 2018, besides the album and videos releases, W3 4R3 NUM83R5 plans a national tour. Songs as “The Rise of Eden” bursts into a blast of energy.
With such cheerfully titled songs in their setlist as “Slaughter of the Soul” and ”Death and the Labyrinth”, six-album veterans At the Gates look, on paper, like a band in need of an emergency sense of humour transplant. But to see them live is to be reminded that sometimes even serious headbangers just want to enjoy this extreme metal music.
Abandon hope all ye who enter a At the Gates show in search of something boring and mundane because a whole lot of instrumental virtuosity is about to happen. The hair-raising songs like “At War With Reality” and ”The Night Eternal” rocked the night away.
Their latest album “To Drink From the Night Itself” – as well as tonight’s deeply immersive and massive show – seems to be locked up into the the Gothenburg metal movement back in the 1990s, acting as their most straight-up death metal album to date. “Under a Serpent Sun” sounded booming and crunchy.
The undoubtedly catchy death-metal of “The Chasm” and “Nausea” are a welcome reminder of the group’s ability to craft concise and crushing songs, the sort that gave their revived band such a unique feeling all those years ago.
Fronted admirably by Tomas Lindberg, led by the guitars of Martin Larsson and Jonas Stålhammar. and bassist Jonas Bjorler, and backed excellently by drummer Adrian Erlandsson, At the Gates left no stone unturned in putting forth the best possible representation of what the band has always been synonymous with: death metal at its purest.
Photo credit Enedina Enache
Full photo gallery HERE
Thank you, Alina. A grear review.
Thanx!