Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Boogaloo / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 13.02.2010
Attendance: 350
Ticket price: 28,00€
Paradise Lost with a killer new album! Support act Samael – shocking Swiss devils driven by an artistic stampede of industrial black metal! This February served up three acts who, within ten days of each other, played rescheduled shows right next to the Slovenian border. First came Sonata Arctica in Graz, Austria, who were supposed to play there in November 2009, then Paradise Lost, who should have played Zagreb at the start of last December, and third Depeche Mode, who were due in Zagreb last May. Gig fever like that could finally finish a person off, or could it? Maybe it just grows you extra wings. However you look at it. Ever since the internet started changing the world and “downloading” showed up, a whole lot has changed in how bands operate.
Either bands crank ticket prices up to insane levels and then still only play an hour and forty-five, which was the rule until recently, or ticket prices are a bit higher than they used to be and the set is chopped by half an hour or more. That’s just one of many ways of compensating for the theft of authored material online. Cashing in on official “merch” and trimming concert setlists. A trend that not even Paradise Lost escaped, with their new album “Faith Divide Us – Death Unite Us” (2009) and a new tour.
Boogaloo once again very ordinary. No wild euphoria. The place fills up slowly, very slowly, people chat, kill time over some cheerful banter and a beer, in short, the usual scenery. A table of official souvenirs with very affordable prices, richly stocked. Nice.
Around 8:30 PM, Croatia’s Omega Lithium, from Istria, step on stage. The band blends electronic rhythms with a wrapping of icy gothic metal breath, and with their music and charisma they managed to convince a major label, Drakkar Entertainment / Sony BMG, to take them under its wing and put out their studio debut “Dreams In Formaline” (2009) last year. The quartet capped it off with a short European tour last December as support for the long-running and internationally well-established Germans Subway To Sally. Hats off. From the promoter’s side, a better-suited opener for the night was almost impossible to recommend. And locals to boot! The band didn’t have much time. They squeezed their short set together by covering their studio debut in five songs. Of course their music leans heavily on programmed samples. So the backdrop is built from a sonic matrix of rhythms and richly arranged symphonic keyboards. The gothic melody, crowned by the vocals of petite, fragile, appropriately goth-decked-out singer Mya Mortensen (Yes. In honing its profile, the quartet also took care of “stage names”), didn’t quite get ideal sound conditions this time at Boogaloo, maybe the guitars sounded a bit muffled in the mix, but that didn’t spoil the band’s showing at all. The constant yelling at the crowd, “Come on Zagreb, let’s see your hands!”, came across as pushy and annoying, but they made up for it all in their playing and made the most of the opportunity. A massive wall of riffs, gothic keyboard melodies, convincing arrangements and solid, full-bodied simple rhythms take you to a special mood, crowned by the song Andromeda with an especially invasive and melodically tight chorus.
Swiss metallers Samael, led by the Locher brothers, who over the years have figured out a neat middle ground between electronics and black metal, kept the night’s pulse going. They got three quarters of an hour and started off vehemently, with zero respect, tearing Boogaloo’s walls down into hell! Evil definitely overpowered good in everything during their spectacle! The horror show started to please with Rain, from the breakthrough album “Passage”. The band instantly forged the right bond between the rather small crowd and the stage chemistry. Charismatic singer and guitarist Vorph, with light-colored hair traditionally tied up in a topknot and an outfit mixing goth and samurai heritage, hooked the audience in a heartbeat, with stares aimed straight into eyes, charisma and a convincing, deeply immersed performance. In fact, the other three guys on stage next to him lost all interest and came across more or less as obligatory extras helping Vorph pull off his “show” theater. The vocals are more and more “croaking” and losing the typical extreme “black metal” character, yet still venomously biting to the bone. The band carries a touch of that dark morbidity typical of their countrymen Celtic Frost, but in their expression, an excellent mix of industrial, melody and black metal shards, such sermons hold a special place on this planet. Vorph’s brother Xy, who still sat at the drums in Rain, soon showed that his basic stage position is behind a plethora of keyboards and buttons. Later he mostly handled live sample programming of electronic rhythm patterns and symphonic arrangements, which co-create the bulk of Samael’s ruinous atmosphere, though he did sit back at the drums now and then and, over the sonic backing matrix, deepened the rhythmic reach of individual songs.
Last year the band released a new studio album, “Above”, but included just one song from it in the set, Black Hole. That one was among the fastest of the chosen set and, with a mix of wild old-school blast beats and wickedly evil keyboards with a neat church-organ arrangement, a proper black metal atmosphere and of course massive riffing, it conjured in many ways the classic Samael days, those before the release of “Passage”. In the chosen set, the excellent Slavocracy burned through everything; with its great combination of trademarks of the band’s new-era image it especially conquered the crowd below the stage and earned a thunderous response.
The band thought of everything, so we got to enjoy visual projections on a screen in the background, which further fueled the songs’ message and fanned the atmosphere during the show. The peak of the Samael gig was Into The Pentagram from the studio debut “Worship Him” (1991), with a grandiose, doomy, solemn keyboard intro, scorching vocals, and a great combination of tongues of fire on the screen, which brought to life real sizzling inside a hellish cauldron. The real treat of the night, which in the overall tally of Samael’s performance, with excellent execution as the cherry on top, squarely challenged Paradise Lost. Samael didn’t hide their delight at getting the chance to visit the Croatian capital again so soon, after last year’s visit with Slovenians Noctiferia. In short, Samael in 2010 remain an excellent reason to go to a gig!
With their new, twelfth studio album “Faith Divide Us Death Unite Us” (2009), Paradise Lost confirmed what its predecessor “In Requiem” (2007) hinted at. They’re heading back to their roots. Of course the thing isn’t as intense or extreme as the good dose of death metal that spiced up the band’s early days (“Gothic”). But the guitar riffs of the newest songs confirm that the guys have turned to the school of the old metal craft. The riffs are bare again, bony, rolling, penetrating, they howl dully and, combined with the lead melodies of the unison guitars, work wickedly and mournfully, creating a mood that has always worked perfectly in this band’s hands. So it’s no surprise the new songs sit so well, nicely balanced within the concert set, which this time offered a “bit of a mixed” experience, a cross-section of the entire discography, on the occasion of presenting the new record.
First off, it has to be said that Paradise Lost, lined up as Nick Holmes (vocals), Greg Mackintosh (guitar), Aaron Aedy (guitar), Steve Edmondson (bass) and newcomer Adrian Erlandsson (drums), who started his career with At The Gates and, via The Haunted, Cradle Of Filth and Deathstars, finally landed among the legendary British gothic doom metallers, were supposed to play Zagreb on 05.12.2009. But then it happened that founder and guitarist Greg Mackintosh had to leave his bandmates mid-tour because of his father’s serious illness. Guitarist Milly Evans temporarily and quite successfully stepped into his shoes. He’s the band’s longtime stage tech, someone Paradise Lost trust completely. With him they managed to save a few shows, but at the same time they realized they wouldn’t be able to push through the whole tour that way. Evans was, after all, tied to the tour of his main band Terrovision.
Either way, it was better to wait a good two more months. Mackintosh returned to the band and Paradise Lost could finally play a few of the missing dates. Watching a Paradise Lost show without Greg Mackintosh is, after all, like sniffing violets with a gas mask on.
More talkative than usual, Nick Holmes broke the barrier between audience and band right at the start by announcing that the setlist is already known anyway, so fans needn’t shout out requests, and that the band was therefore ready for total improvisation. After the expected attack with Rise Of Denial from the new record, the band got the metal crowd on its feet with the excellent “Shades Of God” classic Pity The Sadness, as Erlandsson kicked in the double bass pedal and set the band rolling in one big jolt. And that song showed that Paradise Lost are still an exceptional machine today, grinding everything in front of them with fantastic tightness and stage-movement coordination that crept under their skin over the years together, with the excellent mutual awareness that comes with the long mileage of raising hell on stage. But Pity The Sadness also showed that Nick Holmes today isn’t the same Nick Holmes as almost 20 years ago, and that the years have taken their toll. The voice has lost some of its punch and power. It’s especially noticeable in this song, then As I Die and particularly Eternal, where the death metal growl is almost essential. Nick also had some trouble with the higher registers, which he happily left to the crowd to sing, or just skipped.
Erased too, from the days of short slicked-back haircuts, got an extraordinary response. With a keyboard backing track, sure, but the extraordinary bond between the band and the crowd covered for it, with the audience joining in especially on the choruses with Nick. The massive riff fired at full blast!
And the new album? From its batch of songs it was above all the furious Frailty that caught fire, itself one of the album’s highlights. Nick had already announced its content at the start, saying the story is about having to get up at 3:00 AM and catch the “goddamn” plane (“fucking airplane”).A guitar-wise nicely dynamic song, where MacKintosh’s extraordinary commitment especially came through. The charismatic guitarist was in his own world the whole time, winning people over with his stage presence. Tattoos, long hair down past his backside, eyes smeared with dark paint, almost shaved eyebrows, gaze fixed on the floor and the guitar neck, unyielding and with a dynamite dose of faith in his own creations! Worthy of respect. Edmondson, who in posture, hairstyle and movement looks a bit like Siddharta’s Jani Hace, kept a “forced” smile on his face the whole time but maintained eye contact with the crowd. Rhythm guitarist Aedy, meanwhile, was the target of a drunk music fan who kept bothering him during the performance, stretching a hand toward him, blowing smoke under his nose – yes! In Croatia you can smoke in clubs again. In the eyes of the southern neighbors, a real Las Vegas for Slovenia! Aedy diplomatically tossed the guy a crumpled piece of paper with the setlist, which the drunk lug didn’t want to accept, but the gesture had the desired effect. In his anger he stomped out of the hall (probably for another beer) and so did a big favor to many in the front rows on the left side below the stage.
A terribly short regular set! Already during it Holmes walked backstage a few times, since his vocals sounded worn and weakened. The band also didn’t manage to get the sound dialed in right. From the very start, Greg Mackintosh’s unison lead guitar motifs, the trademark of Paradise Lost’s energy, weren’t audible enough. Later the guitarist was pushed up in the mix, but even so, the vocals came across as a bit too faint throughout. So did the keyboards in the sonic matrix.
The band returns, and the title track of the new Paradise Lost album “Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us” sums up the fact that the Croatian crowd had by then gotten well acquainted and befriended it, as they joined in successfully on the verses, and the show took wing in the finale with the obligatory staples of the iron repertoire, The Last Time and Say Just Words, during which the get-together with the doom/goth veterans reached its peak.
An hour and twenty minutes didn’t serve up a single track from the excellent album “Icon” (1993), which is certainly a big disappointment. I might add that the phenomenal Embers Fire occasionally shows up in the setlist on this tour, but sadly Zagreb wasn’t picked for this “Icon” classic. The gentlemen said goodbye to the crowd, leaving after an otherwise quality show that somehow met expectations, with a bitter aftertaste of poor sound conditions and too big a dose of routine face. Though Nick, as mentioned, chatted with the crowd more than he usually does.
The next day Paradise Lost and Samael traveled to Belgrade. After playing another show there in the usual fashion, one that had been postponed from December 2009, next up was a visit to Romania. But they didn’t get there the way they wanted. The tour bus got into a traffic accident. Luckily, none of the crew was hurt, but the odyssey of both bands suffered a delay, which forced Samael to cancel their show in Cluj. If nothing else, the last European tour will surely stay in the Paradise Lost members’ memory for a long time, as fate played a fair few nasty tricks on the musicians. A consolation, only because the latest unlucky events and unwanted mishaps match the very sermon of Paradise Lost’s gothic/doom origins. After all. Paradise Lost left a really good impression in Zagreb, which keeps them as untouchable pioneers and veterans of their unique craft, expressive essence and power captured, both at live shows and on the studio releases themselves. Enjoying their live magic is still a welcome and recommended, not to say mandatory, spice for the everyday life of heavy metal connoisseurs.
photos: Robi Lipej
Setlist
OMEGA LITHIUM: 1. Dreams In Formaline 2. Nebula 3. Point Blanck 4. Stigmata 5. Andromeda SAMAEL: 1. Rain 2. Solar Soul 3. Reign Of Light 4. Infra Galaxia 5. Western Ground 6. Ceremony Of Opposites 7. Black Hole 8. Into The Pentagram 9. Slavocracy 10. The Ones Who Came Before PARADISE LOST: 1. Rise of Denial 2. Pity the Sadness 3. Erased 4. I Remain 5. As I Die 6. The Enemy 7. Eternal 8. First Light 9. Enchantment 10. Frailty 11. No Celebration 12. One Second 13. Requiem —encore— 14. Faith Divides Us — Death Unites Us 15. The Last Time 16. Say Just Words
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