By Jase Walker
After talking through somewhat amusing emails letting everyone know of this rescheduled show to January… In the New Year.. the tour is now underway with its initial stop in Utrecht. Anyway, moving past the awful humour it’s time to have a bit of fun with New Years Day supported by Conquer Divide!
Based in the upper echelons of Tivoli Vredenburg in the Pandora stage which lies on the 9th(?) floor of this imposing entertainment complex, it’s going to be a lovely reason to forget about the ice cold foggy weather outside for a few hours.
As it’s just the two bands on tonight, the slightly late doors give ample time for the be us to fill up prior to Conquer Divide taking the stage to blow the doors off and start the show. The sound and lighting techs appear behind me along with the smell of coffee with them, it’s time for Conquer Divide to kick things off. A few pops and cracks permeate the start but first show teething issues can be like that unfortunately. Other than that they’re kicking off a pretty solid show that is getting the bodies moving and amping up the energy. The mixed vocals bouncing back and forth between their bass player and main vocalist sound solid as well and are well balanced amid the rest of the mix. It seems clear that not many people here are fully aware of them but it looks like they’re doing a great job of winning the crowd over and get a lot of noise and crowd participation with every song. I do find it a little bit odd that they seem to be using a bass synth track in addition to the live bass though.
Overall though this is exactly what I’d want to see out of these for my first live experience, it sounds solid (minus the random PA pops), the band moves around a lot and genuinely looks like they’re having fun playing and the riffs feel super crisp and the drums are strong and punchy. Conquer Divide are some real good riffy metal with strong pop influences and knows how to write a solid earworm littered with catchy hooks. Really happy to have finally caught them live and I’ll be filling my boots when I see them again in barely three weeks time with Ankor!
The room goes dark and… nothing seems to be happening other than a smash cut to some Pantera. Bit of a weird intro I suppose but yeah, cue the flashing lights and it’s time for New Years Day to kick off properly. It does seem a shame that the venue doesn’t seem particularly full as I suppose the rescheduling may have had an impact especially comparing September to January. Anyway on a more positive note, New Years Day sound properly meaty and unshaken by the turnout and are still here to put on a big show. I’m not sure how I feel about (some of) the uncleans being on a backing track though, there’s a very clear difference in the levels between the live vocals and the audio track for the uncleans that is quite jarring. Other than that the though the guitars are super strong and come through nice and clear along with the drums being thunderous, great stuff. There’s some pretty fun choreography happening with every song as well which is always a nice touch considering how many bands just stand there playing and not much else.
There just seems to be something a little off with this performance though that’s not quite sitting right in that it feels a bit on rails and it’s not really engaging me as much as I wanted. It’s almost as if the backing tracks are being used as a crutch rather than something to compliment and augment the show and the longer the show goes on the more off-putting it’s becoming. Sadly this has had a fairly big impact on my overall enjoyment of the show, I’m trying to not let it bother me too much because there is some real good bits going on such as their drummer being a legitimate beast as well as how they act on stage but the over-reliance on backing tracks to cover for shortcomings rather than layering is quite damaging and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I do hope they continue to have a great tour throughout the remaining dates but I’ve left this show feeling like it was a bit of a hollow performance on the whole. Sorry folks.
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