Aalborg Metal Festival 2018 // DAY 1 (Festival Review)


THURSDAY

XENOBLIGHT (DK)
BROUGHT BY PAIN (CAN)
ENTHEOS (US)
GOROD (FR)
BEYOND CREATION (CAN)
VREID (NO)


Thursday was an overall sluggish day with relative low attendance. We experienced a lot of, if not too much, progressive music. The party was really started when Vreid hit the stage with a brilliant concert with a great black metal kick-in-the-face, but with a slightly reluctant attendance where the audience one by one continued to leave during the concert. Our impression is that the fan base of the genres of many of the bands this day is not that big in Denmark, and as a result by this Thursday was not a major success.

XENOBLIGHT (DK) / 19:00
The winners of the Danish part of Wacken Metal Battle had the pleasure of opening Aalborg Metal Festival 2018, but sadly with not too much time for people to get invovled in their music. The most dominant and active person on stage was lead singer Marika Hyldmar, with her aggressive growls and endless headbanging, there were not much from this concert to be remembered by. For the ones that have experienced Xenoblight live before, nothing new under the sun except they played their new song 'Oblivion'. 

BROUGHT BY PAIN (CAN) / 19:45
Canadian Brought By Pain was the first band this night to deliver some progressive death metal. It was obvious that these people are in kind of routine. On stage you could see that they knew what they were doing, and there was no doubt they had done it many times before. Sadly, with these kinds of tech-death bands, they do not seem to catch you for more than the one hour they played.





ENTHEOS (US) / 20:30
If there was one band this day who could get the vigour started, Entheos was the one. By now, people would have had a couple of beers and with Chaney Crabbs' enthusiasm and personal magnetism, the room was filled with energy. Entheos is an extreme metal band all the way from the US of A. This was apparently the band’s first European tour, which they share with three of the other bands from this night, namely Beyond Creation, Gorod and Brought by Pain. This evening was the first show of this bundle out of many throughout the rest of November. As first listen, you would not know if the vocalist was female or male because of the dark register you typically hear from a male voice. We were presented with a very progressive, sometimes jazzy sound, with some very focused musicians. They had a lot of sound elements going on on the PA system, but they worked well as small rests in between the otherwise classic technical progressive music.

GOROD (FR) / 21:15
Next up was technical death metal band Gorod from France. Here there were also many progressive elements to be found with breakdowns, but with a more core-ish vocal, not really fitting the sound fully, especially not when the vocalist started pig-screaming. As of our ears there was not much coherence between the songs, and it mostly appeared as jumble, sadly, but lack of knowledge in the genre could also be an influencing factor.

BEYOND CREATION (CAN) / 22:30
One of the headliners Thursday was Canadian Beyond Creation with their delicate and special sound. Again, we had the pleasure of seeing guitarist Kévin Chatré and bassist Hugo Doyon-Karout again, as they performed with Brought by Pain earlier this night, Though we were of the conviction that the band uses a fretless bass (or even used to), there was actually no such thing this evening, but headless string instruments instead. The band still had their well-known unique sound though, and they did quite a good job with this performance. Not in a mind-blowing or overwhelming way, as one could have hoped for more, and some people left with some kind of an “unfinished” feeling. The bass was harmonious, the drums and guitars not so much. Also, the backing vocals were just as loud as the lead vocals, which did not really match up at all. Otherwise the sound was good. Oh, and yes, they opened the concert with a Batman intro! Later in the set we got to hear another Batman tune. This evening the band also performed their newly released third album Algorythm. As we did not think we had had enough tapping for tonight, Beyond Creation would give us the last bit with several songs with all three string instrument players would tap simultaneously. To us, this seemed like pure technical show-off skills. But of course, if you have skills, use them!

VREID (NO) / 00:00
Finally, we had a new input this late Thursday night after tons of tech-progressive (death) metal. Black metallers Vreid from Sogndal, Norway, were ready to stir up the crowd with some new songs from their latest album Lifehunger (read our review here) and old classics as well. They actually opened their set with the last song Heimatt from the new album, which is an instrumental one. Throughout the set we were also presented with other new songs like One Hundred Years and Black Rites in the Black Night. As a very rare special treat Vreid decided to play an old Windir classic this night: Journey to the End. If you have some background knowledge about Vreid, you would know that the band was created back in 2004 in the ashes of the tragic death of the lead singer of the band Windir, and therefore Windir songs are rarely played live anymore. It is amazing to have experienced this exceptional happening. Vreid did a solid concert with a great bond to the audience by using the Scandinavian languages. Unfortunately, some festival guest had already left the venue by this time, but the remaining ones seemed to enjoy the show, especially people in the front row went full throttle. Like many of the other bands this night, this concert was the first one for Vreid on their tour spanning through November and December.
As an outro they had chosen Danish classic Fly on the Wings of Love by Brødrene Olsen, who performed this song at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2000 and won… It put a smile on many faces, as the remaining few people walked out of the hall. Vreid was in top form this night, and this was Sognametal at its best!




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