Author: Rok Klemše
Venue: Cvetličarna, Ljubljana
Concert date: 19.11.2010
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: 20€/24€
Over the past year the Sindian Undergroung crew, alongside the reliable Dihurčki, has been keeping our live-music diet well stocked. This time they made sure the Forging Europe tour stopped here, and with it no fewer than three bands playing Slovenia for the first time: Finland’s Ghost Brigade, Israel’s Orphaned Land, and the tour’s headliners, giants of the Finnish metal scene Amorphis, who are celebrating twenty years in the game this year.
We were wrapped in a veil of smoke and fog by Amorphis’ fellow countrymen, whom the headliners, in a good-natured, patriotic gesture, picked as the opening act for the entire Forging Europe 2010 tour of Europe. In a solid half hour Ghost Brigade laid out their vision of melodic death metal mixed with progressive touches and, above all, a strong aftertaste of sludge metal. Sadly, the Finnish ghosts didn’t quite live up to some pretty big expectations, mostly because of a not-so-well-built setlist. Credit where it’s due: hearing Ghost Brigade live is an even better experience than listening to the studio recordings, but it was just too much to have over three quarters of the set made up of extremely slow, wailing tracks that, admittedly, capture the lyrics about loneliness and despair more than perfectly. If one or two such songs were enough for Ghost Brigade to build a real atmosphere of melancholy and doom, stringing together similar tracks managed to wreck that atmosphere and turn the whole thing into an extremely monotonous, hard-to-digest slog. We finally got our first proper shot of sludge metal with the hurricane-force Suffocated from the still-current album Isolation Songs. How brilliantly the Finns managed to build, with just two riffs and an intro, a track that pulled the most people up to the front row and tears you apart from every direction with its raw power. Too bad Ghost Brigade didn’t put the setlist together more carefully, so that they wore us out again at the end with draining songs, even if the very last one was the excellent A Storm Inside.
A bouncier continuation was in the cards when Israel’s Orphaned Land took the stage. Back in 2005 the Israelis came within a stone’s throw of our border, when they presented their then-fresh album Mabool in Zagreb (alongside Paradise Lost). This time Orphaned Land stepped onto a Slovenian stage for the first time and did a thorough job presenting the still-current record The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR. The Israelis were an extremely interesting and exotic addition to the Forging Europe tour, and their one-of-a-kind blend of progressive metal with Eastern folk and ethnic elements promised a colorful experience. The band’s vocalist Kobi Farhi, dressed in a white robe, made sure of that right away, stressing that he is not Jesus Christ, while Orphaned Land spent a good three quarters of an hour on songs mostly from Mabool and the current record. Orphaned Land walked onto the Cvetličarna stage confident and self-assured, but sadly the experience was spoiled by extremely bad sound. Drums and bass completely drowned out the guitars and vocals, and on top of that all the ethnic/folk elements were played from backing tracks. Despite the terrible sound, Orphaned Land put on a good show; especially impressive were the unique frontman Kobi, with his exceptional ability to switch between clean and growled vocals, and the charismatic, energetic, always-smiling guitarist Yossi Sassi. I truly hope Orphaned Land get a chance at a make-up exam here soon, with much better sound, maybe with some ethnic instrument played live and even vocalist Shlomit Levi, who regularly joins the band at shows across the Middle East.
At the announced hour the lights finally went out and the members of Finland’s Amorphis walked onto the Cvetličarna stage one after another. To a taped acoustic intro of Skyforger they took their places, picked up their instruments and, for an hour and a quarter, unrolled the land of a thousand lakes before us. Plenty of people have mixed feelings about what Amorphis are doing today, but there’s no denying the Finns’ outstanding quality across their whole career, even if many old-schoolers turn up their noses at the ever-shrinking death metal influence and the writing of ever more “radio friendly” songs. Even if their music is admittedly getting softer, Amorphis live out an evolution all their own, which in 2010, with the Forging Europe tour, finally brought them to us as well. With the very first riff, Amorphis flung open the doors to the world of the Finnish national epic Kalevala, which they sing about in most of their lyrics, and took us for an hour and a half into a world of magic, fantasy and sorcery. Adjectives that glow and come alive in their own light when Amorphis turn into the characters of Kalevala on stage. The opening trio of songs reminded us of the still-current record Skyforger, and after that we got a skillfully built setlist made up of hits from the newer era, older classics that made most of the crowd’s hearts flutter, and no shortage of sweet surprises. No matter which era the Finns sailed into, the intensity of the show didn’t flag for a moment, and for that we can mostly thank frontman Tomi Joutsen’s excellent performance. He built a genuine connection with the crowd without having to say more than five sentences. But what good is a great frontman without a great voice? That’s where Amorphis struck gold, a big axe mjolnir landing right in the honey, when after Pasi Koskinen’s departure they replaced him with Tomi. A vocalist who’s barely a meter and a kebab tall makes up for the lack of height with a brilliant voice that works superbly in the melancholic clean parts as well as the epic choruses, and when Tomi throws in a brutally animalistic growl, you go looking for your jaw somewhere down on the floor. It was really something to hear that power in the ancient classic Exile of the Sons of Uisliu from the debut The Karelian Isthmus, and it makes you wish for an even better use of that phenomenal growl, by blowing the dust off wreckers like Misery Path, Black Embrace or The Lost Name of God too. It would have been really great to hear a few more songs from the cult records Tales From the Thousand Lakes and Elegy, but then Amorphis would have had to stay on stage another hour or two. Still, in an hour and a quarter Amorphis managed to enchant the Slovenian crowd with songs where one moment you can tire yourself out properly, and the next you soak up the unique atmosphere and strain your vocal cords (Magic & Mayhem, hehe). The only criticism this time goes to the somewhat weaker sound, since the rhythm guitar in particular was extremely hard to hear, and at least at the start the clean vocal lines were poorly mixed as well. Although you could quickly call the instrumental five-piece rather static, the band still gives off a special energy and charisma, and through the music a timeless magic that held us captive right up to the last beat of the expected yet stirring and fantastic finale with the enchanting My Kantele.
The evening with Ghost Brigade, Orphaned Land and above all Amorphis won’t be forgotten any time soon and will stay a fond memory. A gig like this one, with a solid turnout, is also a nice reminder to local promoters that we’re sick of the umpteenth Korpiklaani and Amon Amarth show and similar chewed-over bands. It was nice to read the news that there’ll be another chance to hang out with Amorphis at Metalcamp 2011. See you there!
Photos: Nina Grad
This report was created in collaboration between Rock Hard Slovenija and RockLine!
Setlist
GHOST BRIGADE:
1.Deliberately
2.My Heart Is A Tomb
3.Into The Black Light
4.Lost In A Loop
5.Suffocated
6.22:22 – Nihil
7.A Storm Inside
ORPHANED LAND:
1.In Thy Neverending Way (Epilogue) 2.Barakah
3.Sapari
4.Birth of the Three (The Unification)
5.Olat Ha’tamid
6.From Broken Vessels
7.Ocean Land (The Revelation)
8.The Kiss of Babylon (The Sins)
9.Norra el Norra (Entering the Ark)
AMORPHIS:
1. Skyforger
2. Sky Is Mine
3. From the Heaven of My Heart
4. The Smoke
5. Better Unborn
6. Song of the Troubled One
7. Exile of the Sons of Uisliu
8. Silent Waters
9. Alone
10. My Sun
11. Silver Bride
12. Black Winter Day
– ENCORE –
13. Into Hiding
14. House of Sleep
15. My Kantele
Photo Gallery
