Acts: Lost Society / Solstafir / Amorphis
Concert date: Tuesday, 1 November 2023
Location: Zagreb / Boogaloo / Croatia
And that day finally came — after several years, Zagreb’s Boogaloo found its way back onto our concert-going calendar. Because it took nothing less than Finnish progressive melodic death metallers Amorphis to bring us back there.
The legendary band, active without interruption since 1990, stopped at the famous Zagreb club on the concert tour promoting their latest and fourteenth studio album “Halo”, released the previous February. For the tour they brought in Icelandic metal weirdos Solstafir as special guests — stylistically light years away from Amorphis, which is no surprise at all. It’s a tactic many bands have been running with in recent years, since mixing things up draws bigger crowds on tour. And to top it all off, Amorphis also brought along Finnish compatriots with serious road mileage and five albums under their belt — groove metal punks Lost Society.
That the Boogaloo visit was going to deliver was confirmed right from the opening set by Lost Society. The excellent party-time opener was spoiled by just one small detail. We’re at Boogaloo. So: the guitar sound. Bass and drums cut through fine — let’s throw that over our shoulder and look at what Lost Society actually delivered in Zagreb. In terms of real substance, they leaned hardest on their latest and fifth studio album “If The Sky Come Down” (2022), firing off 112 and Underneath right out of the gate. Most of it revolved around frontman Samy Elbanna, who worked the crowd with practiced ease and pulled it off brilliantly. He was everywhere. The loud, bedazzled showman (‘sleaze meets metalcore/nu-metal’ — well, you see all kinds), backed by a tight rhythm section and guitarist Arttu Lesonen, was completely in his element. No complaints — the guy’s got magnetism to spare. Tight, locked-in, full of punky swagger — the perfect opening shot to prime the runway for the very different musical story that followed.
Solstafir. Iceland’s finest weirdos. Certified post-metal obsessives! Active since 1995 — and what a ride. The band actually broke through in the post-millennial era, right as interest in the post-metal genre started shooting up sharply. The band is wholly their own thing, in every way — no matter how you look at it. Not just because they stubbornly write in Icelandic, but also because of the singular worldview their musical philosophy has built. This drew a mob of devoted fans to their Zagreb show, who were already massing long before the set around the merch table, and when the band hit the stage at nine o’clock, the audience reaction confirmed everything. The band’s look creates an air of lucid, otherworldly presence through the costumes and stage bearing alone (personal note: it repeatedly reminds me of Vulture Industries), further reinforced by vocalist Aðalbjörn “Addi” Tryggvason’s stage presence throughout the show. A one-hour hypnotic performance, driven by a relentless, piercing, and above all raw sonic bed through which Solstafir built their wall of destruction. The sight of the rustic hardware on both guitars and the Rickenbacker bass added its own note.
In that hour, Solstafir put the emphasis on their current album “Endless Twilight of Codependent Love” (2020) — all things considered their most ambient and ‘soft’ record to date — but the setlist also dipped into older classics through which the band’s dark identity flared with real intensity, that faithful connection to the black metal roots of their career still very much alive. The crowd was completely swept along. The venue had really packed out, and the set flew by in a flash. An hour with the Solstafir weirdos was definitely not enough.
Amorphis — the headliners, the evening’s main stars — took the stage at 21:30. The room thick with fog, bathed in blue and red light with occasional bursts of white spotlights. As expected, the band opened with material from the new record “Halo” — Northwards, followed immediately by On The Dark Waters. The crowd went wild — nothing else was ever on the cards. Amorphis had been missed — the forced p(l)andemic pause had done its thing. The euphoria in the crowd was building minute by minute. Early on the sound wasn’t exactly optimal, but things sorted themselves out by the time another new track, The Moon, rolled around.
Amorphis are a team. A six-piece. They breathe as one. On stage they operate like a hockey team. They radiate supreme confidence and demonstrate a fascinating tightness. The communication between members is constant and close, and on stage the band functions as an impenetrable fortress. Tomi Joutsen (wearing a shirt from cult Swedish death metallers Grave) was brilliant on vocals. He effortlessly switched between growl lines and clean vocals throughout the entire set — not a single moment of weakness. Between songs he fired up the faithful with short, punchy addresses, keeping them right there with him. The band delivered some serious stage kinetics. During Bad Blood, for example, Koivusaari, Holopainen, and Laine lined up shoulder to shoulder at the far right of the stage (from the audience’s perspective) during one passage, and so on…
None of this is surprising. Over their long career, Amorphis have held onto their original DNA — and expanded it. From a quartet they’ve grown into a six-piece. Today they play a vivid and singular blend of melodic death metal with marked detours into progressive and folk territory. The member with the shortest tenure in the band today is, fittingly, vocalist Tomi Joutsen — who, by virtue of his charisma and exceptional vocal abilities, is truly irreplaceable. That observation alone confirms that Amorphis are a formidable entity in performance terms.
The concert wrote its own chapter when the band launched into three consecutive tracks from the cult second studio album “Tales From a Thousand Lakes” (1994). It kicked off with the intro Thousand Lakes before the band dropped into Into Hiding, with Tomi asking the room whether anyone would mind if they stayed with that album a little longer. So Magic And Mayhem and Black Winter Day rang out too. Insane. Then came a stretch dedicated to the much-beloved “Skyforger” (2009) — a section of immense musical seductiveness, delivered back to back by the theatrical Silver Bride and then Sky Is Mine.
After the musically visceral new Seven Roads Come Together, the band drove toward the grand finale by hauling the crowd-beloved My Kantetele (“Elegy”, 1996) out of the iron archive — the whole hall knew it inside out — before closing the set with the erupting “Eclipse” (2006) classic House Of Sleep.
Amorphis left the stage without any theatrics, but Boogaloo was ringing with it, and the crowd demanded the mandatory encore. The band dipped into “Queen of Time” one more time, delivering the opening crusher The Bee — which had been gently missed throughout the main set — and it tore the room off its hinges.
Amorphis operate at an intensely professional level. Sure, routine is a big part of their business at this point — no surprise given the mileage — but a band with such a powerful back catalogue of compositions simply cannot and will not disappoint. In Zagreb they delivered a top-tier performance, a show packed with devastating energy that confirmed Amorphis are, after more than 30 years of activity, a musical force commanding total respect. The six-piece shows no signs of stopping. Year on year, they keep growing and maturing artistically.
Authors: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Lost Society setlist:
1. 112
2. Underneath
3. Riot
4. Awake
5. What Have I Done
6. Into Eternity
7. No Absolution
8. Stitches
Solstafir setlist:
1. Bláfjall
2. Akkeri
3. Rökkur
4. Fjara
5. Ótta
6. Goddess of the Ages
Amorphis setlist:
1. Northwards
2. On the Dark Waters
3. Bad Blood
4. The Moon
5. Thousand Lakes (taped intro)
6. Into Hiding
7. Magic and Mayhem
8. Black Winter Day
9. Silver Bride
10. Sky Is Mine
11. Wrong Direction
12. Amongst Stars
13. Seven Roads Come Together
14. My Kantele
15. House of Sleep
—encore—
16. Intro
17. The Bee
