Location: San Dona Di Piave, Revolver Club, Italy
Date: Thursday, 29 September 2022
We spiced up the tail end of this September with a string of back-to-back gigs. The will was there and so was the time. In the town of San Dona Di Piave, nestled in the Italian Veneto, you’ll also find a charming club called Revolver, where hard rock and metal shows go down at the club level — the kind of venue comparable to, say, Ljubljana’s Orto bar, Graz’s Explosiv, or Zagreb’s Vintage Industrial bar (as it was). As far as our Italian concert escapades go, we used to frequent the New Age club (in the town of Roncade near Treviso), and we’d happily make the trip to Pordenone too, where Il Deposito Giordani used to operate in its day. But that was then. Thankfully, the (still running) Revolver club is here, currently almost single-handedly keeping the entire club scene of the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia region alive, sitting at a relatively manageable distance from our western border. The club’s programme can boast a consistently colourful and varied concert schedule that’ll satisfy fans of all kinds of metal and rock subgenres. And as said — it’s still pretty close to Slovenia.
And the legendary Swiss industrial black metallers Samael also hit the road on a new concert tour, on which they promised fans they’d perform their fourth studio album »Passage« in full at every date. It’s their breakthrough record, where they first began weaving industrial elements into their black metal roots, while also gradually replacing the charming odes to Satan of their early era with occult themes. The band didn’t even know at the time that they’d put out an album whose substance would prove an inspiration to so many who heard it. As such, it opened up some previously uncharted horizons in the direction (extreme) metal was heading.
»Passage« came out a good 25 years ago. Around the same time — or rather, before the end of the nineties — Swedish black/death metallers Diabolical also got started. The Locher brothers invited them along on the European tour, as this quartet of extreme, ominous mass-mongering has, ever since their last album »Eclipse« dropped in 2019, been looking for the right opportunity to bring it to European stages. The band has been pretty slow on the album front over their twenty-plus years of activity. But the latest one — Eclipse — is a very important record for »Diabolical«. Most of the 40-minute set with which they opened the evening at half past eight was in fact devoted to performing the latest album. For all the hair-raising pose, the approach is actually very melodic — yet it pulls in the direction of what Septicflesh have been up to lately, and newer Behemoth too. Symphony-bolstered, Diabolical unleashed a hurricane of death metal doom, brought by four horsemen of the apocalypse carefully clad for the evening in black tunics, whipping it all up with strict professionalism and more than exemplary tightness. The mix accompanying their performance was equally on point. Through a fog so thick you could cut it, an ice-cold chill prowled and howled, rattling the bones of everyone in the club. A wake-up call! A real one! From older material the band pulled only a single track — Reincarnation of the Damned (»Neogenesis«, 2013) — and also unveiled a brand new original called Transformation Hell.
Samael! That evening the quartet drew a fine crowd of devoted, soul-tending faithful who’d come to cheer on their heroes. The band split their set into two parts. In the first they played »Passage« in full; in the second they walked through the rest of their long and lavish back catalogue. Still commanding the band today are brothers Michael »Vorph« Lochert (vocals, guitar) and Alexandre »Xytras« Lochert (samples, drums, keyboards, rhythm machine), with the lineup rounded out by Thomas “Drop” Betrisey — who switched from bass to guitar in Samael back in 2018 — and bassist Ales Campanelli, who joined the band two years ago.
Samael proved once again just what formidable and effective architects of infectious, hypnotic atmosphere they are. The darkly theatrical bombast of their songwriting instantly conjures its own singular vortex, one that pulls everything in front of it straight into the gut of that demonically attractive pull. At its core a fairly simple compositional approach — one that subordinates everything to building a massively glowering wall of guitar phrasing, driven by a punching, cavernous rhythm section. Over it all reigns Vorph’s still-penetrating, charismatic growl and his phantom-like stage presence, to which everything else in the performance submits.
Samael are seriously kinetic on stage. Vorph transforms into a proper little devil, with bassist Campanelli and guitarist Drop both constantly in motion, adding their part to the infernal scenario. Especially Campanelli — for whom this is his first Samael tour — you can tell he’s practically bursting with the urge to perform. The band delivered a seriously solid sound with the right balance between all the elements in the mix. The devastating and relentless cannonade, mercilessly commanded by the little devil Vorph, kept the crowd soaring. Especially when Jupiterian Vibe hit the setlist — with its infectious combination of driving rhythmic groove and slashing phrasing — followed in stark contrast by the crushing The Ones Who Came Before, where Xytras also got a thorough workout on all his rhythm programming patterns, and then the epic march of Liquid Soul Dimension. »Passage« is its own universe, and I’d wager every dog in Veneto was howling at the moon during Samael’s set at the Revolver that evening. A new shift in atmosphere toward softer territory came later with the distinctly musical, almost pop-tinged Moonskin. And on from there. To the very end of the album. Not a single stumble! Outstanding. From the first to the last moment of a cult album.
The band backed the show with stage visuals on a projection screen at the back, while beams of spotlight fire continually complemented the belching fog. The hypnosis worked on every level. The second half arrived almost too quickly. In it the band delivered material from their other studio albums across eight tracks. Not all of them — but it’s worth singling out the fact that Samael also wove in moments from the era of their purebred, scornful black metal madness, when somewhere around the middle of the second set they tackled the blasphemous »Blood Ritual« (1992) classic …Until the Chaos. The band opened the second part of the show with newer-era Samael drawn from their current album »Hegemony« (2017). And it was with that same album they closed out the concert, delivering the ‘venomous’ Black Supremacy. The energy and vibe didn’t let up for a single second in this part of the show either. The band delivered with excellent tightness. Undeniably commanding the lion’s share of all that stage attention was the black apostle Vorph — without whom you simply cannot imagine Samael’s identity, their work, or the band’s live shows, not even for a second.
A concert and tour tailor-made for the true Samael fan. Not the one who only spins the first record, or the first two. The show at Revolver wrapped up all too soon. An hour and a half of black mass, in which Samael bewitched everyone present with a compact, excellently tight and deeply felt performance. True devotees of the band could hardly have asked for more. And »Passage«? After all these years it stands unquestionably as a special studio work — one that, even after 25 years, hasn’t gathered a speck of rust or mould. Live, it grabs even harder. And that’s exactly the experience this show delivered.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist Diabolical:
1. Tyranni
2. The Fire Within
3. Transformation Hell
4. Requiem
5. Reincarnation
6. Betrayal
7. Black Sun
8. Inception
9. We Are Diabolical
Setlist Samael:
first set – full “Passage” album
1. Rain
2. Shining Kingdom
3. Angel’s Decay
4. My Saviour
5. Jupiterian Vibe
6. The Ones Who Came Before
7. Liquid Soul Dimension
8. Moonskin
9. Born Under Saturn
10. Chosen Race
11. A Man in Your Head
—second set—
12. Samael
13. Luxferre
14. Son of Earth
15. …Until the Chaos
16. Infra Galaxia
17. Reign of Light
18. Baphomet’s Throne
19. Black Supremacy
