Funeral Procession Weekend - an Inside View
Mundo - Zottegem - Belgium
(19 April 2003)
Weeks later, a tour is set up. Many long evenings work resulted in something worth it. All in all 7 shows, 6 countries, feasible distances and a financial break-even. Sounds like a plan. Poland show gets cancelled in March. Luckily a replacement is found soon. Paris show is cancelled early April. Too late to find a replacement. Sleepless nights, lots of stress, calculation and re-calculation: a loss is probable. But what the heck, it's still possible - and it's Skepticism!
First show is on the 11th. Co-organizer Frederic will be "The Boss" this time, while I stay home and wait. Jealous I am. Wish I had holidays from work left. Daily updates say that the shows are good but the crowds are thin. More stress. Next Saturday is the Big Day.
Pre-sales for the Belgian Doom Night amount up to 60. Not too bad. There's still hope. Early Saturday morning is shopping time. Need beer. Need lots of beer. There's a rumour about Finns and alcohol - and it's not a myth. Early arrival at the venue. It's 12.30 pm. The stage is being built, the gear is tested, the fridges are overloaded with fluids, and the food is spread. Some time later the other bands arrive. No accidents, no troubles. So far so good.
Right on time, 4 pm, the doors open. There already are some visitors. Would end up with about 120 paying visitors in the end. Together with Mundo staff, bands, crew, guests and press, this would make some 160 people inside the venue. Not overcrowded, but looking well full. Just as it should.
Merchandise is immediately going well. Many people take the chance to buy the albums that have just been released, shirts, and a couple of other available things. Good for the bands, as this will maybe prevent them from a loss on the tour.
Perfectly on time, as all the other bands on this event, Until Death Overtakes Me enters the stage for their show. The crowd is curious; many people know the totally slow and uncompromising monolithic doom from this band. Some have already heard the new album. Noone can imagine what this will be like on stage. Interested and curious is what I am also. How will this be live, and how will the people react to this? Two songs of twenty minutes each were what we got. Amazing, absolutely breathtaking. And the crowd loved it. It was very silent during the show. Many people closed their eyes and nodded their heads along the slow dirges. Darkness, some candles, and very serious faces: a good show as well. Some slight sound problems. Many people didn't notice Stijn's vocals. They were perfectly mixed along the guitar lines, to that extent that you could hardly notice they were vocals. But people were in awe, mesmerized.
Next ones on were British traditional doomsters of Cambian Dawn. A big difference with the previous band, which was actually a good property of the bill tonight: enough variety between the bands to keep it interesting. These young doomsters managed to play a great set, often remembering the audience of earlier Cathedral and the likes. They recently released a single, which shows a promising future for this outfit. Young as they are, they still got a lot of time to grow. Slightly tighter guitar work, and some improvements in the vocals (the voice sound is actually really great), and it will come.
Time for a big change again. Extreme doom death is what we get from Despond. An excellent set with well-structured and varied songs, very dark music, gloomy atmosphere. Although the occasional mistakes were visible every so often, this band consists of well-skilled and experienced musicians, with a clear stage presence and experience. This is visible in the ease with which they play and the confidence they have on stage. A debut album from this band is coming and we can only hope it will be here soon. Already, we can be sure that it will be showing no less than excellent music. Despond has not much live experience as a band, although some individual members have a lot of experience with other bands. This made up for the lack of routine and can only make us realize how awesome future live settings of Despond should be.
For Pantheïst, this was a big day. As their debut album 'O Solitude' just got released, they celebrated this fact with a gig before their own Belgian people. Apart from some sloppy parts in the first track, due to sloppy sound and sloppy monitor levels, this show was living up to all expectations that were made. When expectations are high, it is already a big achievement to match them. Pantheïst played a selection of songs from their new album but also included a song from the demo and a song from the next album. Personal highlight was the ever-amazing 'Envy Us'. Less static than with UDOM but still quite strongly bound to their places, the Pantheïst members did their best to impress everyone present with their slow funereal doom. Due to the recent tour experience, the songs were played quite tightly, leaving Kostas' clean vocals the only edgy part of the performance. But his very strong grunts totally compensate that. While the first (mainly positive to extremely positive) reactions on the new album are coming in, Pantheïst has definitely set their mark on the Belgian doom scene, letting everybody know that they're a force to be reckoned with. And may the future prove them right!
And right then when you'd think that there is hope for the future of the Belgian doom scene and that there is a band who can put some new life in the genre, Insanity Reigns Supreme hits the stage to remind us that the genre actually never died. Their music is a mix of death and doom metal, rather than being death/doom. Very heavy and fast parts are varied with slow, melodic doom parts. Vocals go from whispers over spoken parts to extreme death grunts. And that all is mixed into some of the most brutal doom you can get. In between two songs, Criz announced that Insanity Reigns Supreme would record their second album this year. That would be a nice 15th anniversary for the band indeed. As an introduction to that new album, they played a couple of new songs, bearing titles like "The Fallen", "Apocalypse" and "Forever Damned". As an encore, they unleashed the oldie "Dark From the Soul" (from their second demo) upon the dooming masses, which is probably to be re-recorded on the new album. This was an excellent show and a good way to get rid of the last bits of energy and happiness. And taking the reactions of the audience into consideration, the people loved it!
Then finally the time came for Skepticism to enter the stage. Everybody had been waiting for this band. The cult band that they are, they have this mysterious aura surrounding them. And their stage act only retained that aura. Before they came on stage, there was an 8-minute intro on tape. When everybody was getting impatient and nervous, they arrived, dressed in funeral clothing. Not a word they spoke to the audience. Hardly a look into the crowd. The only words they spoke in between songs were a few lines in Finnish with their roadie. The lightshow was very modest with only smoke and white light. They played a blend of older, more recent and new songs, giving us a good taste of what Skepticism is and will be. The setlist consisted of:
The Raven and the Backwards Funeral (new, re-worked version of a song on 'Process...')
Shred of Light, Pinch of Endless (new)
By Silent Wings (from 'Stormcrowfleet')
Farmakon Process (new, re-worked version of 'Process...')
Song #4 (new song with an unpronounceable name)
The March and the Stream (a classic!)
The Everdarkgreen (another classic)
When they left the stage, a few seconds of silence followed, after which the crowd started shouting for an encore. Yet they didn't come back. Later on I heard they doubted about going back but they thought their time was over. Too bad. All in all, this Belgian Doom Night seems to have been very successful. The bands were pleased, the people were pleased and also the organization were pleased. Frederic did an excellent job taking the lead. A little chat with their vocalist learnt me that also Skepticism were pleased.
Goudvishal - Arnhem - The Netherlands
(20 April 2003)
Upon arrival, there was time to greet the bands and go for some food before the venue actually opened. Already at the soundcheck it was clear that the sound would be even better than the day before, a fact that pleased me a lot. It was the last gig of the tour for Skepticism, Pantheïst and Until Death Overtakes Me, and they were planning to make it a good one. For today, Rotterdoomsters Officium Triste joined their ranks to spice the whole up a bit. A good choice, as was proven later on.
First up again were Until Death Overtakes Me. And immediately it was clear that the Dutch crowd really got it. In between the two songs ('Missing' and 'Absence of Life', like all the times before) they shouted "play slower!". Yet again, it was surprising how attentive the crowd was, after all the music of Until Death Overtakes Me is very difficult to get into. The scene imagery was the same as on the Belgian Doom Night as well: big candles on the sides of the stage and Stijn, Kostas and Frederic with their immobile stance for the duration of the show. Very impressive show.
Next on were Pantheïst. "Aren't they the same people we just saw?" Actually, the people are partly the same, but the band is different. As UDOM is the project of Stijn, with Kostas and Frederic (both from Pantheïst) as session members for live gigs, Pantheïst is the outfit of Kostas, with Frederic, Nicolas and Oscar as permanent members and including Stijn for the live gigs on this tour as session guitar player. Good enough to confuse some people anyway. But that didn't hinder them from liking it. Short but good set including 'Envy Us', 'Envy', '1000 Years' and 'Curse the Morning Light'. The sound was not ideal, but good enough to show what the band had to offer. Crushing funeral doom, varied with some faster parts and a broad range of vocal styles, yet dark and brutal all the time. Again they proved that a long and glorious future is ahead of them, if they work on the small imperfections they still have.
"Hello, we are Officium Triste and we play speed metal"; that’s how vocalist Pim announced their act. Compared to the standards of the other bands that night, he wasn't that far from the truth. Their catchy melodic doom-death is extremely well fit for live performances, yet an order of magnitude faster than the extreme slowness of Until Death Overtakes Me or Skepticism for that matter. Only seldom one can see a band enjoying themselves so much on stage as Officium Triste. Joking around in between songs, smoking (not only cigarettes) and drinking, but giving themselves for 110% during the songs. From older songs like 'Stardust' over a range of tracks from 'The Pathway', including the Chorus of Ruin cover 'Headstone'. In between songs, Pim thanked the crowd, thanked the other bands and the organizers. After the supposedly last song, he also announced he needed to go to the bathroom urgently. But the ever-cruel, loud and cheering crowd wouldn't let them go, before they played their ultimate song, a cover of the great Anathema classic 'Sleepless'. Heads banged, hair was moving all around, until the very end of the song. An excellent live set, outperforming anything they ever did on album. So far, Officium Triste remains something to be experienced live.
Shortly after, the cold Finnish guys from Skepticism prepared their set and then disappeared to get dressed "properly". This time around, they didn't torture our patience as they did on the Belgian Doom Night (or, as I heard, in Berlin), but showed up on stage soon after the lights went out. They kicked in with a superb rendition of the classic 'The March and the Stream', proceeding to the song of which many people wouldn't have expected to hear it live in their wildest dreams: AES. And yes, the full 28 minutes of it. Being halfway the set after 2 songs, is a strange thing to experience, believe me. For a single second, it seemed that Skepticism would loose a spark of their mysterious aura when their vocalist announced the next song with a softly spoken "Farmakon" to the microphone. However, not many people had understood what he had said, keeping the veil over them intact. 'The Process of Farmakon' showed the crowd what Skepticism had been up to in recent years: writing excellent new material. Soon to be released on Red Stream Records. Over-the-top excited Dutch fans (even shouting "Skepticismmmmmmm" during the performances) managed to get what the Belgian crowd didn't get: an encore. A few moments after having left the stage, the band did return to treat us with 'THE ORGANIUM'. We were grateful. And this became the end of a weekend of doom over the lowlands. An event that is not likely to recur soon, as Skepticism is planning on writing a new album - and taking the needed time for that. But at least, we have been doomed for good.
- Heiko Isselee
(5 May 2003)
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