Text by Sebastian Bramböck, pics by Tina Burgstaller.
I haven’t heard a decent Doom band in years. Not that there aren’t enough out there or playing in my surroundings. Just because I wasn’t quite in the mood.
But for the great Paradise Lost everyone come out of their caves and visits the band that is around like… forever.
The first of three bands that night was SINISTRO from Portugal. Heavy guitars grooving with pounding drumwork and downtempo atmosphere of its own. At times simple but also very effectful for the songs they took place.
Yet there was the vocalist. And here we had a, let’s say dilemma.
I spotted two different opinions in the audience. First there was those who concentrated on the music. The enjoyable metal performance with the angelic female voice that had a lot of more brutal shoutings to it as well. The music. Great.
The second half of the audience just couldn’t get pass her performance. I heard things like “Full-body-Tourette” and “spasms -” … well they had been very nice. But all of them really just complained about the performance. Weather they just didn’t like it or didn’t understand the bigger cause of this presentation, doesn’t really matter to me, because the music was great. If you don’t like the looks of the musicians or how they act close your eyes and you will be pleased after all, because in my opinion, this is a great band. And when the have a headliner show with a supporting lightshow and all the other stuff bands use to support the sound, I’m sure they will have a killer-respond throughout.
Second and my personal favorite of the night was Pallbearer. A pretty straight forward mid-tempo band with hard instrumentals and harmonic vocals of their two guitarist/bassist on the other hand. We had an amazing songwriting here. I love a band that has a certain sound but still enough creativity to make songs that don’t sound the same.
Also this was a pleasure watching. I mean- they gave everything, playing like it was the last day on earth. Amazing energy and a lot of fun on and off stage.
Unlike their opener, the audience was pretty united in their opinion on this band. And it was good. As said, a lot more straight forward, yet the solos and musical ornament in these songs put them in a much more progressive light, which obviously had the right touch for this venue and hopefully many more on this and every other tour they play in the future
Paradise Lost at last.
After a really long prep-time, the genre-gods started the hardly awaited live performance and killed it. They switched between the growly doom songs and the more gothic-like, clean voice works they wrote over the years every few minutes and made a perfect fusion of the dualities of their unique sound. There wasn’t much else to it than the band itself. Some banners and a standard light set. But no extravagant stuff of any kind. Just some “old” dudes rocking. And they burned that stage down, which is really amazing considering that the music itself isn’t that fast or heavy at all. But it was so damn powerful and on the point. A professional performance of a catalogue of the many hits they collected over the years. Plus some the new works from „Medusa“which perfectly fitted in the set without any loss of atmosphere. One of the less few bands left that still makes a great album after years of existence.
Cheers to one of the greatest
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