Since the trip was long, we sadly missed out on most of the Hangman’s Chair set, so the German black metal collective Der Weg Einer Freiheit was the first to properly blow us off our socks this night. With tons of smoke and atmospheric lights, the Germans kicked off a set that creates the kind of intense atmosphere that really vibes with us. A kind of black metal that veers away from the Satanic themes many of their colleagues carry, and brings us their pondering on philosophy, life and death in mesmerizing musical masterpieces. Since they were only a supporting act, their set only had a handful of their lengthy tracks, but it was enough to get us even more excited about this band than we were before. We mainly got tracks from their more recent albums, so we’d be interested to see them return for a longer headlining set to hear some of that old work as well. We definitely wouldn’t mind catching them again on a stage some time in the nearby future!

Our Belgian friends of Amenra brought a whole other level of intensity to the venue. Those who are familiar with this highly popular project, knew that we were in for an emotional ride, ranging from sadness to anger and anything in between. With their usual captivating visuals projected on the screen behind them, smoke at the right times and flashes of white light, the majority of the room looked like they were in a trance. I don’t think there are a lot of musicians or vocalists that have an as intense vibe on stage as frontman Colin, having his back turned to the crowd for most of the performance to just from time to time suddenly turn around for some tormented screams or some phrases that were almost whispered. There is simply nothing else that evokes the same feeling the way Amenra does time after time again, leaving you both recharged and drained of the intense experience. We were all too glad that they got to show their art in front of a much bigger crowd than last time they were in Finland, and looking at the amount of people that went to the merch booth afterward, I’m pretty confident they reaped quite a few new souls this night. The only wish we had, was to get a longer set than we got this time, but with ‘Razoreater‘, ‘De Evenmens‘, ‘Plus près de toi‘ and ‘A Solitary Reign‘ featured on it, there was honestly not much to complain about…

And then it was time to turn up the energy one last time with Igorrr. While it felt a bit weird to go from the emotionally intense performance of Amenra, to the rather exuberant show that comes with Igorrr every single time, we were all too ready to let ourselves go and party like there was no tomorrow on this Monday evening! Since their stop in Helsinki last year, they changed their female live vocalist again, and while she definitely brought a different kind of energy and stage presence to the performance, we more than appreciated it! Of course there was no doubt that vocally she was going to be absolutely solid, since we assume that Gautier, the main brains behind the project, is rather picky on who he brings in, knowing that they’ll need quite the vocal range with all the screaming, opera vocals and other vocal acrobatics she’ll need to accomplish. But added to that the rather manic energy she brought with her, makes Marthe a perfect fit for Igorrr. JB is of course still the menacing presence that we need to balance out some of the craziness on stage, while guitarist Martyn, drummer Sylvain and of course Gautier are throwing themselves completely into playing the eclectic blend of baroque music, breakcore, trip hop and extreme metal. As soon as they started, we could feel the whole room starting to basically pulsate with the energy coming from the crowd dancing, banging their heads and basically go absolutely nuts from start to finish. And there was also not a single breather moment that Gautier and his gang gave us, going full throttle as good as all the time, even the closing track hit hard being ‘Very Noise‘! We can’t get enough from this utterly unique band and looking at the amount of people that showed up on a Monday night, we’re not alone on this…