By Jase Walker
Much to bewilderment of my friends, I’ve opted to eschew a nice sit in the sun on probably one of the hottest days I’ve ever seen in May in favour of standing in a dark room and having one of Gothenburg’s original melo-death scene stars blow my head off with some riffs. In this case I’m referring to Dark Tranquillity who have certainly been ramping their activity up a ton recently and today they’re going to rip Haarlem a new one.
Along for the ride are Moonspell and Hiraes to complete the lineup for this European romp, a nice meaty selection of bands that are going to smash out some big tasty riffs, my cup runneth over.
Lights dance across the stage while rapid electronic music plays to signal the start of Hiraes‘ set. The riffs hit and go hard as hell right from the outside as the singer sprints up to the stage, her harsh vocal style booms over the speakers. The style reminds me quite a lot of Arch Enemy, rapid, heavy, and a vocal style that has shrill overtones in addition to the deep guttural elements.
A near constant juxtaposition of chuggy riffs and wailing guitar melodies, this has quickly caught the attention of the audience as they happily join in with the singer’s requests for fist pumping and chants. Hiraes definitely come off as Slayer fans with their jumps into high-speed playing while one of the guitars goes absolutely apeshit, very akin to the solo in ‘Angel Of Death’.
Their singer has an interesting alternate microphone as well that looks similar to a Walkie-talkie and adds some distortion to her voice, it’s great seeing some innovation for live vocal performances. The use of smoke stacks with lighting is a nice touch for their production too although I can’t imagine it being particularly pleasant standing on it and getting your face blasted with a plume, but it looks good which is what you want right?
Legitimately, for an opener performance this is absolutely incredible stuff. Hiraes clearly have a huge amount of experience behind them already and this sort of show is worthy of a headline show in its own right. Absolutely sublime performance and tonight’s show is off to a stellar start.
After watching the lighting engineer mess around with fine tuning the lights, it’s time for Moonspell to smash their set out. They’re sporting one of the fanciest looking keyboard frames I’ve seen, I think it’s made from bamboo! I’ve also now discovered that I’m right in the direct line of extremely bright flashing white lights so periodically I can’t bloody see anything! An interesting sound they’re rolling with, it’s my first time hearing them and admittedly I wasn’t quite expecting a symphonic proggy sound like they’ve got!
They’ve kicked their set off to a resoundingly packed room and I’ve seen no shortage of Moonspell T-shirts around the crowd either so there’s a lot of people having their days made right now. Portugal isn’t usually my first thought when it comes to association of symphonic metal bands but these guys are clearly proud of that given how often they mention it. Their singer’s got a great voice for it and while it’s not your average super high pitch wailing type it suits their style fantastically well and reminds me a lot of Ville Valo from HIM but with the added benefit of being able to do some meaty growls too.
I think overall I’m mainly focusing on the guitar solos because good god their guitarist is bloody great, man can shred like hell and sounds absolutely fantastic while doing it. For an older cut their keyboard player decides to jump off and grab a guitar also and he’s a pretty tasty player too! Moonspell have been a real surprise to me as I wasn’t expecting something like this when reading their bio prior to the show but I’ve fully enjoyed this set. They’re fully a band that despite generally being in the symphonic sphere of metal, have not forgotten that they’re metal first and the riff is king. Another great set!
The room darkens after a speedy changeover for Dark Tranquillity and the rear of the stage lights up with three large portrait screens and the shadows of the band walk on, it’s time for the main event.
That familiar sound of the Gothenburg melo-death style feels like true comfort to me as this is exactly what my teenage years were filled with, Dark Tranquillity along with the likes of In Flames, At The Gates and so on punctuated a lot of my exploration of metal at the time. Dark Tranquillity still sounding incredibly fresh and going on the packed room I’d say there’s a good thousand and a half others that agree with me. Their singer promises the crowd a run through an interesting set that swings from old to new but also has some interesting deep cuts in there too, so I’ll be keen to see how the crowd reacts.
It’s taken a while but there’s finally a bit of moshpit action showing but it’s worth noting that this crowd skews a bit older than a lot of the other shows I go to so understandable that people aren’t mega keen on it. The animations that play on the screens during each song remind me a lot of some of the videos that Nordic Giants play during their shows, a lot of washed out shapes with cold lighting. It’s definitely a more recent trend but I do really enjoy the artistic element of having large screens with this sort of stuff, Architects are a big one that comes to mind for it.
The band themselves are visibly buzzed off the response they’re getting from the crowd, their singer stomps around the stage and constantly keeps seeing action that leaves a massive smile on his face.
An audience member at the front row manages to catch their singer’s attention with a bracelet and he grabs it and deftly puts it on without a second thought. Sadly, I’m having to depart a bit early as this show is quite a late running one and work commitments are calling my name on this Sunday.
Spectacular show from Dark Tranquillity. It’s been so many years and they still persist and have a legacy of incredible music. I suppose I’ll just have to make sure I catch them in Utrecht later this year as well… what a shame. Keep riffing!
