Author: Sebastijan Videc
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Venue: Arena Wien, Vienna, Austria
Concert date: 12.11.2013
Ticket price: 33.70€ in advance
It’s been a quarter of a century since five Englishmen got together in Halifax and formed a band that left a serious mark on the heavy metal world. Maybe the gloomy English weather had a hand in their sound, but the fact is that on their way out of their death metal beginnings, they were already laying down the blueprint for doom and gothic metal with their second album, Gothic. In that venerable stretch they’ve put out thirteen studio albums, and they’re one of the few well-known bands (in my book) that wandered off the path experimenting with their sound, releasing electronic pop, basically Depeche Mode-flavored records, but they found their way back and returned to their roots with their latest releases. Another interesting fact is that the band has kept the same lineup its whole career, drummers aside – Nick Holmes and Greg Mackintosh still handle the writing of new material, and they’ve also announced the recording of a new album for April next year.
In my experience, anniversary tours always promise great gigs, since they usually come with good setlists as well as respected support acts. And this time I wasn’t wrong, because the proverbially cold Austrian crowd was warmed up, more or less successfully, by Swedish doomers Katatonia and Italian goths Lacuna Coil.
When we arrived at Arena Wien, we were more than a little surprised that, even though the show was announced for eight o’clock, the gloomy sounds of Katatonia were already coming out of the hall a full fifteen minutes before the hour. Picking a spot at the top of the stands got us good sound and an excellent view of everything happening on stage. On this tour the Swedes decided to play the whole of Viva Emptiness from 2003, and they added Wait Outside too, which was recorded together with the rest of the songs for that album but only came out on the next one. That album, ten years ago, announced a new era for the band, as they gave in to more rock-oriented sounds, and the record was received well by critics and listeners alike. Since it’s an anniversary tour, Katatonia got to chip in their share alongside Paradise Lost. Similar to what Metallica did a few years back in neighboring Udine with the Black album, the Swedes also decided to play the album in reverse order. That of course meant the hardest-hitting and best-known songs closed out their set. The excellent sound, with the instruments clearly audible, still didn’t really warm up the crowd, apart from a few exceptions. The blame for the performance goes mostly to the vocals; the backing vocals were barely audible, while the lead vocal was pushed up a bit too much, which didn’t do singer Jonas Renkse any favors, as his vocal performance was inconsistent this time and hiding behind his hair didn’t help.
If we could enjoy the sonic picture of Katatonia’s set, the picture flipped in a typically Italian way when Lacuna Coil came on. A heap of bass and mids made everything completely indistinct, and on top of that, with Cristina’s and Andrea’s microphones set too quiet, the vocals got lost in the cacophony of the guitar section. They did manage to boost the signal for the singer, while Andrea could only be heard well in the more energetic parts of the songs. The performance itself, from the Italians dressed this time in black work shirts, was characteristically energetic, and the singer’s sex appeal was anything but negligible. But lo and behold – the crowd once again watched coldly and clapped politely at the end of every song. The whole scene was more reminiscent of a classical music concert in one of Vienna’s concert halls, grinding through a medley of Strauss hits, than a metal show in one of the Austrian capital’s well-known underground clubs. The Italians leaned for most of the set on the current album Dark Adrenaline and on Karmacode from 2006, and spiced the whole thing up with hits like Heaven’s A Lie, Swamped and Spellbound.
After a good half hour of break for the stage changeover, and some much-needed rest for our ears after Lacuna Coil, everything was ready for the guests of honor. The justified fear of bad sound melted away, to everyone’s great relief, the moment the first notes of Mortals Watch the Day from Shades of God, way back in 1992, hit after the intro. Good sound on every instrument, a nicely captured bass with the rhythm guitar, and a clean but just-loud-enough vocal mic were pure balm for the eardrums. As befits an anniversary show, the band presented themselves with pieces from »all« of their albums, which also meant quite a bit of jumping between different musical styles. If you’re wondering why »all« is in quotes, the answer is this – from all the albums but one. EMI meddled with Believe in Nothing from 2001 so much that Macintosh said in one interview that, as far as he’s concerned, that album doesn’t exist, and it seems that also shaped the choice of setlist. And that setlist was a real dessert on the menu for music connoisseurs. The span across the whole catalog demanded growling from Holmes on two occasions, which hasn’t been heard on stage in years, and he pulled it off well, as he did the entire performance, which he’s been known to botch at past gigs (remember the show at Kino Šiška). Aedy, in his unique swaying style, energetically handled the thunderous sawing on his seven-string, while Macintosh served up the melodic parts that define the band’s sound. You could see the guys were in good spirits, and Nick even accompanied Isolate with a comparison to Freddie Mercury’s Living On My Own. They proved they’ve piled up plenty of experience over all these years during One Second, when the volume dropped to a minimum in the recorded intro and they almost instantly replaced the missing samples with bass, drums and guitar. Unfortunately, though, the show, in the opinion of the vast majority, had one downside. It was too short, much too short for an anniversary concert like this. Among other things, classics like Ember’s Fire and As I Die were missed, left out of the hour-and-a-quarter set. Still, the crowd was happy (and only a smidge more alive) with what they saw and heard. In the end, all we can do is congratulate Paradise Lost and wish them another twenty-five fruitful years of making music.
Setlist
Katatonia:
Inside the City of Glass
Wait Outside
Omerta
Evidence
Complicity
Walking By a Wire
One Year From Now
Wealth
Burn the Remembrance
Will I Arrive
Premonition
Criminals
Sleeper
Ghost of the Sun
Lacuna Coil:
I Don’t Believe In Tomorrow
Kill the Light
Fragments of Faith
Heaven’s A Lie
The Game
Our Truth
Upside Down
Without Fear
Swamped
Intoxicated
Trip the Darkness
Spellbound
Paradise Lost:
Mortals Watch the Day
So Much Is Lost
Remembrance
Gothic
Enchantment
Faith Divides Us
Tragic Idol
Never For the Damned
Isolate
Say Just Words
Rotting Misery
One Second
True Belief
Over the Madness
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