Location: Cvetličarna / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: October 15, 2010
Attendance: 400
Ticket price: €22.00 (advance) / €25.00 (day of show)
A dark silence has flooded the Slovenian capital. Its followers, the faithful worshippers of darkness, known to the rest of humanity as metalheads, converged on one single spot in Ljubljana: the Mediapark hall (Cvetličarna). What went down there? Fantasies through shredding and melody. Swedish melodic death metallers Dark Tranquillity paid us another visit, and they pulled in a crowd of several hundred heads of long hair and black clothes.
When the clock struck and the radio cut out, we knew it was time to head into the hall. To our surprise, the first band up was Greek outfit Scars Of The Sun, who twisted our faces into question marks, because nobody saw them coming. Unknown to everyone, they served up (sort of) metalcore-flavored music that didn’t sit well with every ear that night. You could hear Doors keyboards, Offspring’s bouncy energy and Dream Theater’s monotony. Not just a few people, but pretty much everyone lasted a maximum of 2 minutes in the hall, then wandered out for some fresh air and started arguing about these absolute outsiders, if we can call them that, thundering away on the stage inside. Musically they didn’t fit with the two bands that were still to come. But never mind. What mattered was that the crowd was gathering, and there were plenty of familiar faces from the Slovenian metal scene. A beer or two got downed, a word or two got said, and it was already time to go back in.
As if we’d been programmed, we arrived right on time for the Finnish appetizer called Insomnium. Nothing to complain about. The intro starts, the band stands facing the drums, waiting for the moment the first riff, or rather the first hit on the drums, drops. And so it began. They treated us to new and old tracks. Some connoisseurs and fans of the band said the new material isn’t exactly breathtaking, but it sure didn’t look that way. The band gave it everything. The vocalist stepped on the gas, with the guitarist backing him up with softer vocals. Even though combining a raspy male growl with clean male vocals doesn’t usually work all that well, Insomnium showed it doesn’t have to be that way. The two bounced off each other more than nicely. Every now and then the other guitarist chipped in to lift the atmosphere even higher, though he otherwise came across as fairly shy and mysterious during the show. As a fun side note, we can’t skip the fact that the vocalist kept trying to say a few Slovenian words between songs. We heard stuff like: Na zdravje, Hvala. But the funniest and most fascinating part was that he even namedropped Zlatko Zahović and Primož Peterka. Apparently Slovenia’s sports heroes have carried our name all the way up north. In short…the guys were a very good appetizer, or warm-up, for the stars of the night. Hats off, devil horns up!
Another half-hour break and breather in the fresh air, and with it the comparisons between the first and second band. If anyone said Insomnium were better than SOTS, they weren’t wrong in the slightest. Half an hour was gone in a blink and it was already time to head back to the epicenter of melody.
This time the whole crowd was packed inside, and we’d say the number of spinning heads was around 300, if not more. The room goes dark, and a beam of light draws the big, instantly recognizable initials “D” and “T” on the backdrop.
The guys are ready! The show kicks off with a keyboard intro, the ambience jumps up! It gets even more mysterious and spine-chilling. The band crashes into the first riff, and Mikael Stanne runs onto the stage, the lead throat of Swedish melodic pioneers Dark Tranquillity. The guys had a varied offering of songs that kept the crowd on their feet. And how could it not, when they gave off the impression of playing with extraordinary dedication and zeal, sweating 100% out of every pore. Charismatic Mikael urged the crowd to sing, to headbang and to do everything else we consider a must at any proper metal gig, with an attitude aimed squarely at musical extremes! For those of you who may have seen the movie “Get him to the Greek”, you could say Mikael’s stage presence was reminiscent of Aldous Snow from that film. Mikael also did his part for the epic scale of the atmosphere with his banter between songs. Full of good cheer, he got the fans to sing along and finish the song titles as he announced them. Nor can we skip the visuals, which changed with every song and delivered an extremely dynamic, highly atmospheric barrage of stimuli that enriched the whole gig. Lots of psychedelia and unusual morbidity left a big mark on this concert experience. All in all…the guys cut an hour and a half short for us with melodic-tinged songs from Scandinavia. You could even say too short. But everything beautiful passes quickly. So they say.
The concert was a huge success, beautiful in the way it delivered its metal sermon from the Gothenburg school of death metal, a la Dark Tranquillity. The crowd was incredibly mellow during the show. No drunken shenanigans and, amazingly, not a single shout of “Slaaayeeeeer!!!” However steely and dark a metal heart may be, there are always gig moments, like this evening with Sweden’s Dark Tranquillity, whose thunderous echo throws off the kind of sparks that melt every last metal heart.
photos: Martin Prezelj
Setlist
1. At the Point of Ignition
2. The Fatalist
3. Damage Done
4. Lost to Apathy
5. Monochromatic Stains
6. The Gallery
7. The Wonders At Your Feet
8. Iridium
9. Shadow In Our Blood
10. Focus Shift
11. Icipher
12. Dream Oblivion
13. Misery’s Crown
14. Haven
15. Punish My Heaven
16. Final Resistance
17. Therein
18. Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)
Photo Gallery
