Kill'em Aarhus: Corpsessed + Mist + Balmog + Woebegone Obscured + Beneath the Silence 20/10-18 (LIVE REVIEW)

Kill'em Aarhus: Corpsessed (FI), Mist (SI) Balmog (ES), Woebegone Obscured (DK) & Beneath the Silence (DK) 20/10-18, Train, Aarhus
By: Mikkel Jensen & Nanna Toft
All photos by: Mikkel Jensen

This Saturday evening we participated in a brand new one-night festival in Aarhus, presenting five interesting bands covering different corners of genres in metal. The bands were both local and from other countries in Europe.

The first band of this long evening was the local Aarhus based, female fronted, melodic metalcore band Beneath the Silence. That was a lot of words... To a rather empty crowd (that's putting it mildly...) they entered the stage with great spirits with a clear goal, to put on a great show, and they did! If you like that sort of music. Personally, I don't, but it was clear to me, that these guys and gal, have their technique and skills in order. Song after song they demonstrated their musicianship to a clear professional level. The few in the audience seemed to enjoy the show, even though they were wearing death and black metal band shirts (myself included). About halfway into the set they were unfortunately struck by technical difficulties with the microphone and had to put the show on hold for the next 10 minutes. The band joked around onstage and encouraged the audience to go and grab a cold beer, while the technicians fixed the problems. What else could you do in this situation? Well... If you had an instrumental, you would have more than enough time to play that, since everything else functioned just fine. After the break the front woman Mette, apologized for the interruption and introduced the next and most popular song, Hate Me, with great enthusiasm from the few fans in the crowd. They finished the set with one last song and thanked the audience for being there so early. A great show, but not my cup of tea.

Beneath the Silence receives 4/6 this evening.

Next up was also an Aarhus group, namely Woebegone Obscured. The band plays heavy, gloomy funeral doom, and is one of the few of their kinds in Denmark.
As the band enters the stage and strikes the first note, frontman Danny Woe appears as the last person. His deep and piercing vocals echoes throughout the hall along with the heavy and protracted music in the best way possible. Typical for bands in the doom genre is the limited number of songs as each one tends to be of a length differing from songs in other genres. It was no exception this evening, as they only played three songs. The last song, Drømmefald, is opening with an almost oriental-sounding intro, and the band is joined on stage by Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof from the band Krauka as a guest vocalist, giving the song a great twist with some clear, bright, atmospheric vocals. Lead singer Danny Woe proves later in the song that he is also capable of reaching this register. This last song was well-picked as a good break from the rest of the setlist, as it has many uplifting and fast paced elements from the otherwise very solid doom.

Woebegone Obscured receives 4/6 this evening.

As the evening proceeded, it was delightful to see more faces entering the venue. But even though more people showed up, not even half the venue was filled, and the drive was not in top gear this evening. The activity level among the audience you almost had to search for; only a two-person mosh pit and a bit of shaking with the head from the people closest to the stage were to be seen.
Next up was black metal group Balmog. The Spanish quartet opens with a sepulchral chanting intro. The band gets ready with their back turned to the audience, and the begin the first song like a thunderstorm escalating. If you are into good, pure, genuine black metal, Balmog surely would have fulfilled your desires this evening. Frontman Balc screams his lungs empty of air, but passages with clean vocals appear among the traditional black metal vocal as well. Glimpses of almost throat-like singing is to be heard here and there, almost like we know it from Attila's vocals in famous black metal band Mayhem. The members were lively and active on stage, and just as they entered the stage, they left with another chanting outro.

Balmorg receives 4/6 this evening.

Slovenian heavy doom metal band Mist entered the stage after a short break. The band consists solely of female members, but with one male guitarist. The lead singer Nina Spruk has a very charismatic voice, only to be drawn by, and some inspiration from Jinx Dawson from American occult rock band Coven was also to be sensed. It was also very easy to be drawn by Nina Spruk's dramatic appearance on stage. There is no doubt about this band would have fit perfectly in the 1970's Black Sabbath framing, but they for sure has no problem in seducing tonight's audience, even though the band has only existed since 2012.

Mist receives 4/6 this evening.

As the final act of tonight, the time had come to Finnish death metallers Corpsessed. The band was cold as ice and began their set straight from the shoulder with some slamming and forceful music. This was some goddamn delicious death metal! Jumalauta! These guys truly ripped the whole thing apart and proved their place as tonight's headliner. Even though the number of people in the audience had lowered, the remaining few strong still seemed eager for the last band of tonight. If you are not that much into Corpsessed's music, the songs could tend to merge, and it would be difficult sometimes to separate the tracks from each other (but perhaps that is just how it is with death metal)

Corpsessed receives 5/6 this evening.

Hopefully, this mini-festival will be reiterated at a later time/point, because this round has offered interesting and also less known bands from around Europe. It was slightly sad that the event did not have as much support as hoped for this night, but maybe the relatively big diffusion between genres was not an advantage after all. The billing bands this evening were not exactly bands, who are well-known in mainstream media etc. Perhaps the metal crowd of Aarhus is too shy or reluctant to explore unknown bands in challenging genres, who knows. The number of participants at Train could possibly also have been affected by another metal arrangement not far from Aarhus.

Corpsessed official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Corpsessed/ 
Mist official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mist.doom/
Balmog official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Balmog-365630056846060/
Woebegone Obscured official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/woebegoneobscured/
Beneath the Silence official Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beneaththesilence8000/