Author: Rok Klemše
Venue: Gala Hala, Ljubljana
Concert date: 04.11.2008
Attendance: 250
Ticket price: 20€ (24€ on the day of the show)
Even as lazy autumn creeps toward an even lazier winter, Dirty Skunks aren’t letting us catch our breath. They keep stringing together gig after gig, and skipping any one of them would be almost a sin. For the start of November, the Skunks surprised us with a big name of Gothenburg metal, Dark Tranquillity, with Germany’s Fear My Thoughts and Finland’s Poisonblack keeping them company, with more or less success.
First onto the Gala Hala stage, in front of a thin crowd, came German metalcorers Fear My Thoughts, who have played here before, two years ago as support for Canada’s Kataklysm. Back then they still had their old singer Mathias Ockl and a fresh album, Vulcanus, which fans and critics received pretty well, and which pushed Fear My Thoughts into melodic death metal waters in the style of Gothenburg acts like In Flames. The brand-new record Isolation, with new singer Martin Fischer, brings another complete 180-degree turn. With Isolation, FMF have sailed into strange waters of some kind of metalcore, hardcore, modern rock and grunge. Fear My Thoughts might have fared better as support for some other band. This time, the music, pretty weird to the ears of most of the metal crowd, didn’t go down all that well.
We were all waiting for the main acts of the night, the godfathers of melodic death metal, but the next band fixed the bitter aftertaste left by the openers and won over an already pretty packed Gala Hala. Taking the stage were Finland’s Poisonblack, led by the legendary Ville Laihiala, whom we remember from the cult gothic metal band Sentenced. They said their goodbyes with the 2005 album The Funeral Album and an even more cult farewell show in Oulu, Finland, captured on DVD and the live album Buried Alive. Probably one of the few bands that will keep their word that there’ll be no reunion, Ville carries on with Poisonblack. Poisonblack basically pick up where Sentenced left off, and that’s exactly what we got. Melancholic gothic metal with heavy, crushing guitar riffs and Ville’s charismatic vocals. We were quietly hoping for some Sentenced in the vein of Cross My Heart and Hope to Die, but this band, relatively unknown here, used tracks from their three albums so far to build a great atmosphere, interact with the crowd effectively and raise the temperature in the Gala by a few degrees. Excuse Me While I Kill Myself…
After a pretty long wait, we finally got the giants of the Gothenburg scene, who together with At The Gates and In Flames defined the melodic death metal genre. At The Gates have since fallen apart (if you don’t count this year’s reunion), In Flames have veered off into a pretty different (worse) musical direction, while Dark Tranquillity, despite changes in their sound, proudly wave the flag of melodic death metal and have been putting out consistently high-quality albums since their start in 1991, the latest, Fiction, last year. Last year they only presented the well-received record at festivals across Europe, but now they’ve hit the road on a proper headlining tour, Where Death Is Most Alive, to properly showcase the current album. It also coincides with the band’s twentieth anniversary (they formed in 1989 under the name Septic Broiler), so they promised a few cherries on top in the setlist as well. And they delivered… after an atmospheric intro, a perfect shot to the head with the fantastic wrecking ball The Treason Wall! The band was visibly at the peak of their powers, especially vocalist and frontman Mikael Stanne. You’ll have a hard time finding a more charismatic frontman! On top of that, over an hour and a half he ripped through a repertoire that had a few surprises and leaned heavily on the album Fiction, with half of it played. But there was plenty of room for the goodies too, with gems like Edenspring, the gorgeous melancholy of Lethe, Dreamlore Degenerate, Yesterworld… I maybe missed a track or two from the debut Skydancer, Insanity’ Crescendo, But given the show they gave us, with a great light show too (within the Gala’s means, of course), it hardly mattered what they played. You only get such a good, personal connection with the crowd from a few bands, and Dark Tranquillity really are a band that cares a lot about their fans. Dirty Skunks, all that’s left to say is one big THANK YOU!
Dark Tranquillity setlist:
The Treason Wall
The New Build
Focus Shift
The Lesser Faith
The Wonders At Your Feet
Lost to Apathy
Inside the Particle Storm
Out of Nothing
Edenspring
Lethe
Dreamlore Degenerate
Misery’ Crown
Therein
Yesterworld
Punish My Heaven
The Mundane and the Magic
Final Resistance
Terminus (Where Death is Most Alive)
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Text: Rok Klemše
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