By Jase Walker
We are fully in the era of scorchingly hot weather to welcome in the summer this year and I’ve got myself along to Haarlem’s premier venue, Patronaat, to catch Swedish pop metalcore outfit, Normandie! Doing a few extra shows here and there to pad out their live dates jumping between festivals, I’m fortunate to have a headline set up the road prior to seeing them again at RADAR Festival in Manchester.
Along for this show are also RADAR Festival lineup-mates, Tropic Gold. I’m quite interested to catch these on support as they’ve also got quite a unique sound that I’ve given a spin a few times since seeing them pop up on the RADAR lineup.
The energetic three-piece kicks things off to a fair turnout and fills the room with way more sound than I was initially expecting, coming out of the gates with solid riffage and soaring vocals. These fit the support slot like a glove though, similar approach to fast paced and high octane songs that focus more on clean vocals and big hooks.
At times they remind me a lot of newer Thornhill and While She Sleeps as they don’t shy away from the use of electronic sampling to add layers to their music. Getting the crowd on board with a chorus book of “I fucking love that” is how you run a decent opening set that will stick around in people’s heads after they leave the show too.
They’re really belting through songs in an astounding fashion, I’m guessing they’ve got 30 minutes which is pretty standard but it’s looking like they’re set to get through maybe nine songs or so in their set time which is a solid amount. They clearly understand the assignment here in that they don’t have a lot of time to mess around, banking on nobody in the audience knowing who they are so they’ve opted to go for the Speedrun route: all killer no filler. They’re all the better for it honestly, they’ve made peace with the small time they have and are going all in with pounding through as much as they can do with every drop of energy they’ve got in the tank.
The lights suddenly all point to the stage before dropping out and an unusual pitch down monologue plays talking about starting treatment. The lights switch to intense strobes as they launch into ‘Overdrive’, looks like I’m losing my voice tonight eh?! No doubt about that as they follow it up with ‘Seratonin’, I’ve gotta do my best to keep up with those soaring clean vocals. These guys are on fire already, what an incredible sound they’re rolling with.
I guess we’re doing the ‘Dopamine‘ album run as we’re going for ‘Flowers For The Grave’ and the room fills up with the crowd singing back the main vocal hook for it loud and clear. Well no sooner did I say that then they switched it up with ‘Holy Water’ and the central pit erupts which is no doubt going to dictate the vibe for the rest of the night now, we’re up to the higher energy level now and it’s going to keep escalating.
Normandie demonstrate their mastery of writing music that is melodically infectious as much as it goes hard as fuck. Truly a band that demonstrates that you needn’t sacrifice either and can still make cohesive music that delivers on both fronts which still sounds massive live. Jumpy tracks like ‘Babylon’ also go down a treat, and another way I can tell that everyone here is one hundred percent all in for the show and knows the vocal hooks and is every bit as intent as screaming them as much as I am.
The iconic howls of ‘Blood In The Water’ and I can feel my voice straining a bit but I care little about it because I’m having too much fun! Normandie are definitely not a band for rock star antics and opts to just plough straight into what is supposed to be the encore to wrap the show up and I feel an hour has gone by far too quickly but I can feel my voice is absolutely shot from trying to sing everything in pitch and key so I think I’ll deal with that tomorrow with being largely mute in meetings at work.
Normandie again has put on display why I absolutely adore them so much, truly an incredible band that marries solid heavy riffs with beautiful pop hooks that I really cannot get enough of. Fortunately I have a second chance to get my fill of this lovely lot at RADAR Festival in Manchester in a couple of weeks with significantly more beer in me! And probably more of a reason to mess my voice up… oh well, I love it.
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