in the last two weeks, i attended three concerts:

• the first one was by the norwegian prog black metallers enslaved in the z-7. the concert was really good, even though enslaved could have played longer in my opinion. unfortunately, the place was pretty empty, which is something enslaved does not deserves.
• the second concert was by the swedish prog death metallers opeth in the rohstofflager, with the ocean and cynic as support. the guys in the ocean apparently have an urge to move around. i’ve had it so often that stupid kids constantly jump you in the back if you’re standing in the front, but so far i never had it that band members constantly jump in front of you from the front. pretty annoying, somehow. anyway. they were ok. after them, cynic entered the stage. i never heard anything from them, but i heard some people praise them a lot, so i was really looking forward to hear them. well, i’m not sure yet how much i like them, i guess i should listen to their music intensively. but at least they sounded pretty cool. well, then, finally, opeth began to play. as usual, they were simply fantastic. here’s the playlist:
  1. heir apparent;
  2. the grand conjuration;
  3. godhead’s lament;
  4. the lotus eater;
  5. hope leaves;
  6. deliverance;
  7. demon of the fall;
  8. the drapery falls (encore).

  it’s nice to finally have heard godhead’s lament live.

• finally, i saw the german medieval metal band in extremo. the support was the cologne based alternative rock band the black sheep, consisting of four girls, who did a good job opening the gig. then, finally, i was experiencing in extremo. as a lot of famous bands, the concert was also attended by a lot of annoying kids who gave their best to chase people away from good places. anyway, after losing my very good place in the very front, i found a still good one a bit farer away. i don’t know too many albums of in extremo, mainly older stuff, so i didn’t knew at least half of the material, but i still enjoyed it. (they were also the first band i saw who used pyrotechnics.) but there were also lot of songs which i knew, for example vollmond, wind, spielmannsfluch and ave maria.

yesterday, i attended a concert of die toten hosen, a german punk band. the opening band was something from norwegen, and i didn’t really like it. but, opposed to that, the concert by the hosen was good, even though i didn’t knew most of the newer songs. they played a lot of classics, like alles aus liebe, bonny & clyde, eisgekühlter bommerlunder, liebesspieler, schön sein, pushed again, wünsch dir was, zehn kleine jägermeister and hier kommt alex.
the technical gadgets were pretty nice. every band member (except the drummer) had his personal light man, who operated a spotlight aimed on that person. moreover, a set of led arrays hang down above the stage, forming a “broken” monitor, sometimes showing the waveform of the music, or animations fitting to the music.
we got three encores (most of the classic songs were played in the encores), one of them featuring a side blow to berlin, saying that now they’ll play real “jazz” (pronounced as jatz in german), featuring the beginning of eisgekühlter bommerlunder while mimicing jazz.
actually, the concert also had two bad sides. first, as so often, there were some assholes who thought that the smoking ban does not affects them. unfortunately, a common problem :(
the second thing was the great connection of the sap arena to public transportion. there’s a train station very near, the mannheim rangierbahnhof. featuring two wooden (!) platforms and no (!) ticket machine, a huge crowd was squeezed into short fast trains. well, even if there would have been a ticket machine inside the trains (which apparently wasn’t, as it turned out later), it was by no mean possible to reach it. whatever. we were pretty happy as after maybe half an hour the train emptied considerably, allowing us to finally sit down.

the third piece of art i bought is the grimalkin by the german prog/doom project noekk. the cover depicts a beautiful black and white image of an old, wooden house with a window and lots of green in front of it, which made me wanting to listen to it. the album begins very interesting, with a small foreplay which sounds both strange, somehow, and, at the same time, makes the prog interested hearer curious on how this thing continues. the music evolves into a stream of various styles interwoven to a beauty, taking you by your hand, pulling you into a colorful world of fantasy. featuring three tracks, of eleven, ten and twenty minutes, this album sounds like a real gem of beautiful prog, which is not only a beautyful soundscape, but also tells stories, of beautiful dream worlds, having dark, gloomy parts, secrets.

another beauty i found while browsing around in the record store is apokatastasia‘s demo waiting four. apokatastasia is a swiss progressive/experimental metal band, featuring besides classical instruments like guitars, bass, drums also violoncellos and e-cellos. the demo features thirty minutes of a gloomy trip through a mystic world. beginning with a drone, turning into the sound of someone running, maybe fleeing. the music is intense, progressive, dark. the (violon)cello is perfectly integrated into the music, sounding almost like its perfectly normal to have cellos playing. equipped with screams, choirs, and sound effects like steps, breathing, the music turns into a thirty minutes long stream of horror, gloom, darkness, reminding me of the blair witch project. in particular in the running scenes at the beginning and at the end, i can almost see the scenes with my inner eye, like taken with a shaky handheld camera. makes me feel the fear.
i hope i’ll get hold of the band’s first album, shedding, somewhen near in the future.

while browsing around in my favorite music store in town some time ago, i stumbled across several very good albums. one of them, about whom i want to write today, is ashes against the grain by the american folk/black/doom metal band agalloch.
a stream of dark, intense music. full of beautiful, sad melodies. doomy. somehow, catchy, too. creating mental images.
the first track, limbs, is a very good example for this. i feel beauty and despair, going hand in hand.
also a very beautiful song is this mountain on which you will die, with eyes closed, i feel like through a foggy, snow-white landscape in the mountains. a gloomy atmosphere is building up. staying, while the music fades out…
another beauty is not unlike the waves, beginning with the sound of waves. powerful; full of energy, pushing forward, almost no rest. clean vocals mixing with screaming. beautiful.
the album ends with the three-parter our fortress is burning…. the first part is more quiet, slow. at the end, distorted guitars are lightening up in the background, like flames starting to lick, trying to spread. in part two, they gain more intense, spreading over the fortress, while in the more drony part three, they eat up everything. destruction. death. the end has begun.

this friday, metallica held the release party for their newest album, death magnetic, in berlin. the concert was completely paid by metallica; the entrance fee, which was just 10 euros, was completely donated to the german heart center berlin. well, giving money to charity, listening to a good concert, meeting a friend and visiting berlin is always a good idea, so i was there ;-) the party took place in the new-built o₂ world arena, next to the ostbahnhof:

after waiting for a long time outside, we were let inside. we weren’t able to get tickets for the standing area, only seat tickets, but who says you have to stay seated during the concert? here’s a view on the stage including the technical equipment including the speakers, hanging from the top of the hall:

first, the hall seemed quite empty, but as it got later, it filled up. the concert started at 21:30, even though it said 20:00 on the tickets… and i’ve never heard music played soooo loud before the concert, you basically had to scream at each other to make yourself understood. that was a bit annoying. anyway. then the show began, with lots of light effects (though no pyro stuff), loud and heavy music; after some absence (on the album side), back to good old thrash metal.
the setlist was as follows:

1. that was just your life;
2. end of the line;
3. the thing that should not be;
4. of wolf of man;
5. one;
6. broken, beat, and scarred;
7. cyanide;
8. frantic;
9. until it sleeps;
10. wherever i may roam;
11. for whom the bells tolls;
12. the day that never comes;
13. master of puppets;
14. blackened.
    encore:
15. blitzkrieg;
16. jump in the fire;
17. seek and destroy.

my personal favorite from the new tracks is cyanide, as its best suited for head banging :) a cool part was when they released nets, installed at the roof, which contained big air-filled black balls with metallica written on them, which bounced around in the standing area on the hands of the fans. well, until they were more and more captured by some fans and tried to shrink, to make them easier to transport. well, here are some visual impressions:

on saturday, i visited the rock 2008, a one-day festival held on königstein fortress, located in the beautiful landscape of the saxon switzerland, together with a friend. here are some pictures from the fortress:

after strolling around the fortress interior a bit, we walked near to the stage to watch the first band, krieger, a german hard rock band. usually, the first band(s) playing on a festival have the ungrateful job of killing some time, while most of the crowd hopes they’ll stop soon. often, they aren’t exactly experienced or aren’t too good. but not krieger; they played a pretty solid kind of hard rock, maybe not exactly my style, but it was good and we enjoyed it. some photos:

after krieger, a short break took place when the stage was prepared for lacrimas profundere, a german gothic metal band. the break went on pretty fast, and the band entered the stage. i haven’t heard them before, just their name. i think i have to listen to some of their albums before i can give a better judgement, but they sounded pretty good. a photo:

a very noticeable thing about this festival was that all stage reconstructions were done very fast, and the sound quality was really good all the time. i haven’t seen this combination ever before; often, it seems that the reconstruction times were eternal and the sound quality still really bad.
another admireable thing was the strict adheration of the time table. the first two bands had like 30 minutes, and the whole festival was planned to be over by around 23 o’clock, and so they managed to do. even though the doors opened a few minutes later than planned. (well, please admit it, have you ever experienced some festival or concert without any delay?)
anyway, the third band was schandmaul, a german medieval metal band. i know a bunch of people who like them a lot, but this doesn’t change the fact that i managed to not know a lot of them except a few songs, maybe. schandmaul did a very nice show. they managed to get the last bits of the party rocking and rolling. definitely a very good live band. some photos:

then, finally, it was time for the big stars of the evening, the finnish cello rockers apocalyptica. i’ve already seen them last november in zürich, and they were one of the main reasons why i travelled so far for this festival. the stage design was as usual: four large metal chairs, formed like skulls, with a huge drumkit in the middle:

their performance was, as usual, excellent. it’s always amazing how eicca and perttu manage to combine heavy head banging with playing their cellos perfectly. unfortunately, antero wasn’t playing with a burning cello this time, though. besides that, they managed to let the crowd freak out, and played lots of great songs, including some of my very favorites like prologue (apprehension) from reflections and the norwegian black metal classichall of the mountain king from cult, featuring paavo stomping around the stage while playing the mountain king. simply great. here are some photos:

after maybe one and a half hour, everything was over. we took a peek at the merchandizing booth, where the guys from lacrimas profundere were waiting for their fans to talk, being photographed, autographing and talking. then, we took the bus down to the city of königstein and walked back to our hostel, where its owner, lutz, was waiting for the concert attendees at a nice bonfire.
well, i think this concert/festival qualifies for being one of the best i’ll attend this year. the technical stuff was marvellous, the timing good (except that at least lacrimas profundere should have played a bit longer and, well, apocalyptica could have played the whole day anyway :-) ). all four bands were ranging from good to excellent, and in particular the last two made the crowd go crazy. (even though i still don’t get it why on earth one wants to have a mosh pit while a gothic metal band is playing. but then, hell, kiddies aren’t exactly predictable…)

today i did another boat trip on the zürich lake, after getting up pretty early. it was really nice, as the weather was great (the sun was burning, but not too bad), and it was pretty empty. i got one of the seats in the very front of the boat. listening to great music (unholy‘s really great for that, as is vintersorg’s a cosmic genesis). here are some impressions:

three years after releasing ghost reveries, opeth released their 9th observation, called watershed.
it is opened by the beautiful, instrumental coil, sung by mikael akerfeld and nathalie lorichs. this is followed by the intense, heavy tune heir apparent, which i already have been able to listen to live two times. after that, the lotus eater follows, another heavy track with lots of proggy interludes which was already available for download some time ago. track #4 is burden, a melodious, more mellow, proggy track, the first half of it being sung by mikael, the second part being instrumental, with an accoustic guitar finally shifting downwards, until an abrupt strange ending. then, porcelain heart, which was already released as a video before, starts. again, alternativing between loud and quiet, beauty and wildness. after that, hessian peel, starting mellow, beautiful. then, after a small piano solo phase, the brutality returns, in its beautiful complexity, and complex beauty, the end reminding me a bit of the end of sentenced‘s no one there. finally, hex omega launches, beginning heavy, though slow, turning more mellow, changing back to heavy, alternating. pure beauty, floating through the air, crawling down my ears.
i hate making such statements, but for me, this is the best release for this year. definitely. even though the year’s just half gone. watershed is simply ingenious, such a beautiful mix of death metal brutality, progressive rock; this is audible aesthetics. so damn beautiful.

recently, moonsorrow released an ep called tulimyrsky, featuring a 30 minute song called tulimyrsky, a metallica cover (for whom the bell tolls), two old demos (taistelu pohjolasta and hvergelmir) and a merciless cover (back to north). the main track tulimyrsky can be seen as a sequel to last year’s viides luku: hävitetty. again, it begins with a slow, melodious, mystic atmospheric part, lasting 3:45 minutes, until a scream fades in from far away, guitars and drums kicking in, finally launching a black metal thunderstorm after five minutes, evolving into a stream of brutality, speed, piercing melodies. then, later, the music gets slower, less brutal, still intense. a speaker telling a tale. then, the action returns, sounding heroic, somehow, until it fades out into a beautiful, orchestral and melodic piece of music. beautiful.
the two demos feature pretty black metallic sounds, still very good though. moonsorrow is really one of the bands which started as a success and continued to be a success over the years. finally, the two covers are pretty ok, too. and, tulimyrsky is the longest ep i ever saw, having 68 minutes of playing time, from which 30 minutes are the main song, tulimyrsky. again, probably one of the best releases this year.