Well we are back at the Garage for another Spinefarm records night brought to us in association with www.last.fm and as usual we went for some pasta across the road before the gig. As sometimes happens two of the bands were also in there in Amaranthe's case they were eating in and Soen were getting take away pizzas that were all generously bought for them by one of the other fans also eating in there! Which it has to be said was a very cool thing to do. They all seemed to be having a great time.
Soon enough we were across the road in the Garage in time to see DYNAZTY who according to their publicity material have been storming Sweden with Thunderous Heavy Metal in much the same way Sweden stormed Eurovision no doubt! Either way, they came on and are 5 young guys who in many respects reminded me of a young Europe trying to sound like Van Halen meets Motley Crue with a dollop of Iron Maiden thrown in for good measure but with lyrics about being hopelessly addicted to love.
For the first three songs or so, the sound wasn't right with the vocals way down low and no amount of Nils Molin's hair-shaking and shimmying in his red leather jacket could get by the lack of umph in his vocals. It eventually got sorted as the band ripped through This Is My Life (plenty of good anthemic qualities) to get the place going a bit but the songs that did it for me were Land Of Broken Dreams and More Than A Man. They were about the tightest the band sounded all night and seemed to get most of us going.
I tried not to laugh too much at the visions the Sultans of Sin brought up in my mind of some awful third rate Swedish porno obssessed Dire Straits tribute act rather than the glammy metal in front of me, but none of this band look up to the job of being a sultan of sin, they are just not sleazy enough for the title. Still it was far better than the closing number of Raise Your Hands that has all the audience participation bits you could want and the cheesy lyrics to go with it. That said, they were still a lot of fun and they will appeal to fans of, say, Reckless Love and Crashdiet.
Next on and also out of Stockholm are SOEN who are a Metal supergroup formed by Drummer Martin Lopez who used to be in Opeth and Amon Amarth and Bass player Steve Digiorgio of Iced Earth/Testament,Death etc. Kim Platzbarzdis was on guitar and Joel Ekelof on vocals who had some massive set up problems trying to get the drums to work and came on late to deliver a set of very interesting prog goth metal. Much of which featured some incredible six string bass playing and Joel's brilliant front man turn as he comes across as the Prog metal Howard Devoto prognosticating over a Tool meets Opeth style backing of slow building menace and attacks of squalling rumbling noise. So there.
They also had the best backdrops of the evening with a couple of very interesting screens at either side of the stage. The songs just drew us in as they sang about Delenda and who knows what else as over and over they told us they were becoming what I thought. At no point did they ever do anything like play a riff or strum the guitars, instead picking up the necks and bending strings, wrenching sounds out of them to bring an atmosphere of tense bleak midwinter to a warm evening that would make Canvas make sense to our ears.
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The set was a good slow paced builder that shows they have the ability to deliver very complex music very powerfully and with plenty of divergence from the quiet comtemplation to full on assault of a tsunami of noise. I want to hear the album and more from them soon they were the discovery of this night of 3 bands I knew nothing about beforehand.
Last on were Swedish/Danish band AMARANTHE who are a rather confused 6 piece with 3 front people, guitar, bass, drums and samples line up that could have done with a second guitar or a proper keyboards/gadgets player. On the one hand they want to be Evanescence and on the other hand they want to be Limp Bizkit but crossed with, say, Cancer Bats and if you can't quite imagine that add in more sound problems with the drums and the vocals which were overloading for a good bit of the set and (like me) you'll end up a bit confused by Amaranthe.
The opener Call Out my Name set the tone with the three singers working tag team style between the growler long haired guy and the high pitched Fred Durst worshipper and the 'why can't I be in the Pussycat Dolls?' girl singer with the latter two almost in Harmony that made it certain that they wre a 1,000,000 Light Years from being what I kind of thought they might be. And not in a great way, more like a third rate Lacuna Coil on an off day. It just got more confused as the set went on, they never got me to be more interested in the music than in the dancing of Elize and how she shook her hair and that great black belt she was wearing.
I know they are spending the summer playing festivals all over Scandanavia and Atlanta, Georgia and I can only assume the album sounds way better than they did at this gig. For me they were rather forgetable and as the lyrics to one of the songs made clear (Always the Same) in that the bands dynamics didn't work for me at all. It may be "All About Me" as they sang but I'd need convincing they had improved to go and see them again. Alterntively, they need to try working with a sound man who understands what they are trying to do and how to get it across.
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