[avatar =”James” size=”50″ align=”left” /]Audio seems to be becoming the place to go for some of the best gigs recently. Maybe it’s because both the owner and the promoter for the night keep booking awesome bands. Or the fact that it’s just a good venue with consistently good sound. I think it’s a mixture of both.
Due to a last minute Interview request and a few other issues, I missed the first, third and fourth bands. For impartiality sake, I won’t be including them in the review. From the odd snippets I heard, they all sounded quite good.
The first band I saw was Exile the Traitor. I had the pleasure of seeing them open for Bloodshot Dawn and Seprevation back in October. This time round, they were sporting recent addition Wull Hay. They certainly blew away my expectations from hearing them before. Hailing from Glasgow and playing a mix of Melodic death and Death they took no prisoners and gave a first class performance. If my memory serves me correctly they have a new EP coming soon, which I advise fans of Black Dahlia Murder and bands of a similar vein to check out.
After this, I had the joy of Interviewing Markus Vanhala (Guitar) and Jukka Pelkonen(Vocals) from Omnium Gatherum. Massive thanks to the guys and Joe from Black Reach Promotions for agreeing to do one at the last minute.
I then came back in and made my way to the front of the venue in order to get a good view of the band due to me being shorter than most of the other people there. I managed to find a space on the far left side, right in front of where Markus was positioned on stage.
The band opened with a calm melodic outing before launching into their brand of metal. In my discussion with Markus and Jukka earlier, we settled upon it being called “Finnish Metal” with “Lots of notes, usually in the key of E minor”. Playing a mixture of tracks from their two critically acclaimed albums, ‘Beyond’ and ‘New World Shadows’, as well as one or two others from their back catalogue, the band delivered a first class performance with the crowd chanting along and giving a thunderous applause after every song.
In the breaks between the songs, Jukka thanked everyone for coming out and also said that the band would be coming back soon. Given that their album will out late this year/early next year, if there’s an offer for a Glasgow date, I’d encourage the promoters to book them and people to go see them. They’re genuinely nice guys and deliver awesome performances.
In short, this was a superb gig with first class performances from the bands that I saw. I would have liked to have seen all of them, but sometimes things beyond your control happen. I look forward to seeing Omnium Gatherum with Insomnium and Ensiferum in London in March, which will no doubt be another awesome gig.
Thanks go to Joe at Black Reach Promotions for organising the interview and being a great guy in general. There’s a number of gigs coming up which you can check out at their facebook and website.
