Photo Reports

With great anticipation, we welcomed Esprit D’air to the stage. With mind-blowing light shows, erratic energy and a unique sound we know and love, Northumbria Students Union waited with great anticipation to greet these monsters of metal live on stage. Straight outta London, Esprit D’air rock a self-sustaining attitude with frontman Kai manning everything from production and mixing in his home studio to dealing with PR and social media. While not under a record label, this band has ripped the walls of metal down and show that anything is possible if you set your mind to it.

With support from Diamond Black, an intense dark rock band hailing from London, you couldn’t ask for much more emotion and vibes up on the stage. With never hearing either band live before, I was astounded by the amount of awe-inspiring energy that both could consistently perform while manning a staggering amount of crowd engagement. It’s what you expect from a band, to adore their fans the way they adore them. Below are a series of photos to better describe the events that unfolded that cold evening in Northumbria University’s Reds bar.

It was a big night in Munich to see the British Enter Shikari at the Zenith, which, despite being very well booked, didn’t fill up completely.

Opening the evening was the local band Blackout Problems, an excellent surprise for me. They showed that they have a great fan base and know very well what to do on a big stage, exciting the audience in a positive way.

After an excellent start, came one of the bands I most wanted to see live on stage, the Americans of Fever 333. Super high expectations, and they don’t disappoint at all live, they are a complete blast! The quartet from California bring the heat and get everyone up and moving in the Zenith. Jason Butler, known for his healthy madness and 1000% dedication on and offstage, proved it again in Munich, disappearing from the stage for seconds and then reappearing at a very high place, in a spot that few expected him to find again!

British bands have a weight on their shoulders as a result of the legacy of historic world names (Beatles, Motörhead, Queen, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Sex Pistols, etc…). I believe that’s why you can expect great experiences from them. Enter Shikari are no exception and put on an excellent, extremely well-staged and refined show to present their latest work “A Kiss For The Whole”. The combination of the band’s excellent songs, and a set of world-class visual projections, resulted in a fantastic spectacle. The Zenith was able to welcome the Brits with open arms, and it was a night to remember!

It’s spring and the year kicks off with a metalcore highlight: Electric Callboy is on the ‘Tekkno World Tour 2024’. In tow, the German sextet brings along the band Coldrain from Japan and Nothing More from the United States. A musically excellent line-up of bands. Especially, Coldrain reminds us that in Europe, one should often look towards the land of the rising sun. Otherwise, gems like this might be missed and overseen.

Nothing More, based in San Antonio, Texas, brought the audience closer to another major escalation. The charismatic frontman of the combo is Jonny Hawkins – with a bare, painted upper body and barefoot, he sweeps across the stage, captivating the audience with his performance and voice.

Right on time at 9:00 PM, the pure escalation begins – huge, stage spanning video walls show projections and with a loud bang, it starts: Electric Callboy storms the stage. There’s no holding back in the audience for the next 2 hours. Pyrotechnics, fire pillars, and glitter confetti at least every third song ensure a constant special-effects firework. The 6 members of the German metalcore band – especially vocalist Nico Sallach and shouter Kevin Ratajczak – are whirling non-stop over the boards. Awesome light show in combination with colourful video animations, fantastic sound. Here’s where you get great value for money – big bang for your entrance fee! A true live spectacle!

Enjoy our pictures!

Cradle Of Filth being on a massive European tour is bringing a lot of people out of their houses and into venues, including myself. But what got me even more excited about this tour, is that the special guest was no other than Wednesday 13 playing only Murderdolls era music! And as support the Italian aliens of Sick N’ Beautiful and US industrial band Drift, it was quite the package! Sadly, due to another wintry assault in Finland, public transport experienced quite some delays, so we had to miss out on the first band, but this is what we did see:

A progressive giant like UK’s Tesseract dropping by in your neighborhood while they’re on a massive tour to celebrate their latest album ‘War of Being’, should be reason enough for you to get outside. Add to that the German Unprocessed and the US mathcore misfits of The Callous Daoboys and you know you can’t sit this one out! And we clearly were not alone in that sentiment, because Helsinki’s legendary rock club Tavastia was absolutely packed!

Tuhdimmat Tahdit gave us some great “fish-metal” when they brought Brymir to town. A pretty perfectly sized intimate club show with flying pikes, chicken nuggets and a lot of happy fans. Hönö supposedly even got their first real mosh pit. Of course, Brymir wouldn’t be Brymir without a few jokes during their set. And so at some point during the gig, drummer Patrik decided to ditch his place behind the drums to join the fans while Viktor tried his best to keep the blast beats coming.

Asgaard and Return Bookings kicked off the new year with performances by Gravekvlt, Bokkerijders and Traquenard, who started their Turbo Evil Tour. Fans of black and extreme would certainly get their money’s worth. After a dark, chilly day, there was a nice attendance in Asgaard for the first event of 2024.

The event was opened by Traquenard, a metal punk trio based in Lille, France. They combine 80s thrash metal and its delirious solos with hardcore punk flavoured with a touch of black metal. Some describe it as Darkthrone at the beach. It’s an interesting mix of styles. Mostly punk, a pinch of hardcore and a some metal riffs, Traquenard produces complex-free music with a je ne sais quoi-attitude. They made a solid impression and showed talent.

Then it was Bokkerijders’ turn, founded in 2021 and in the process of gaining a real cult status. The members of Bokkerijders have played in bands like Ordigort, Bones, Ishtembashtock, Witch Trail, Caducity, Chalice and Kuar Nhial, among others. Bokkerijders explores the boundaries of black metal with a mix of raging drums, trash-like guitars and raw grunts combined with atmospheric-black passages and this combination works really well. The audience was captivated by the thundering drums and the gloomy grunts. At the closing song “Bokkerijders” the heads of the audience nodded in sync. We’re looking forward to the release of a full length album of this unknown gem on the Belgian metal crown.

The last band of the evening was Gravekvlt, a French band from Nantes formed in 2021, consisting of four musicians who play ‘evil speed metal punk’ together. Their main influences are Venom, Toxic Holocaust and… Motörhead. There’s no denying that their music is influenced by Motörhead. As soon as the performance starts, we get a giant blow to the head. We’re washed away by a tsunami of sound. Fast and hard, as it should be. It sometimes seems a bit kitschy, but it’s also a lot of fun. Lemmy would have enjoyed the show whilst sipping a Lemmy.

Core fans must still be hungover from the fantastic night at Backstage Club! The tour by the Americans of Lionheart marks the return from the Californians to Europe in 2024. This short tour serves to present their new EP “Welcome To The West Coast” live. Accompanying them very well, are some very good friends who don’t miss the opportunity to pummel the audience with similar accusations to the headliners. Suicide Silence, Kublai Khan and Paleface Swiss managed to get the crowd into a state of excitement and ebullience that few can manage, and kicked off a memorable night of hardcore, metalcore and deathcore.

The Backstage in Munich filled completely to welcome the North-Americans Thrice. On this “The Artist In The Ambulance 20th Anniversary Tour”, the band presents the album released two decades ago, playing it in full from start to finish as originally released on record. The reception at the Backstage was very warm and enthusiastic for the old and timeless songs, as well for the rest of the songs presented in an irreproachable way by the experienced quartet. I’d especially like to highlight the vocal performance of Dustin Kensrue, who manages to completely envelop us live with his raspy voice and sentimental lyrics.

Opening the night, the Danish post-rockers, Town Portal, performed a convincing concert to show themselves and acquire new fans of their project, which although not new, may have gone a little unnoticed by many.

I adore my same old same old bands and I don’t think I will ever get tired of just listing the same songs over and over again. But recently I felt the urge to also try something new and check out some artists that I hadn’t heard of or listened to before. One of them was Altamullan Road. I decided to not check any of their material before the gig and go in with zero expectations of what to expect.

Altamullan Road consists of Johanna Iivanainen & Johanna Kurkela, who are joined on stage during this tour by Johanna Iivanainen‘s husband and Johanna Kurkela‘s brother. Their music is a mixture of cinematic, pop and folk music and while that sounds like it would be a lot, it actually isn’t in the slightest. In reality, the songs are pretty simplistic a lot of the time, with the music being stripped down to the essentials. As the duo has so far only released one album, the show also consisted of several covers. Although the word “cover” doesn’t really do it justice, while the songs were still recognizable they were also transformed into something completely new.

In the end all I can really say is: Even if this isn’t your usual taste of music, I highly recommend checking them out on one of their live shows if you have a chance to do so.