Il portale della musica Heavy Metal

Cradle Of Filth + Ne Obliviscaris - 11/21/2015 - Nosturi - Helsinki

It had been a while since last time in Nosturi. This time it was noticeably warmer than what one might expect in late November, but the complete bitter darkness of a Finnish snowless winter is the perfect backdrop for some dark metallic tones.
Although Cradle of Filth was the headlining artist, my main mission was to witness Ne Obliviscaris in a club setting. They made their debut in Finland on the main stage of this year’s Tuska and quite an impact they’ve had looking at how many people were there to see them, despite the shorter warm-up act slot. Being an Australian band, they would never have made their huge world tour without their successful crowdfunding campaign. Good thing they did, since their epic take on progressive melodic death metal is unique and it seems they’ve left many new enthusiastic fans in their wake.
One of the first things that one notices about NeO is their use of violin to add an ethereal and transcendent vibe to their music. Luckily, all the instruments were clearly audible, thanks to some very good mixing. The benefit of a smaller stage and playing indoors, is the amount of contact the band can make with the audience, and connect they did. At least on the floor close to the stage, the atmosphere was palpable, solemn during the more beautiful parts and furious during the more aggressive parts. The only gripe I had was the short set list, but the band seemed genuinely taken aback by the Finnish fans and vowed to return as soon as possible. They even did their own merch-selling, with most of the band hanging out with fans, and I managed to have a cool chat with Xenoyr. Mad respect to bands that have the strength and will to meet people after their set.

This wasn’t my first contact with Cradle of Filth, but I can’t really count seeing their music video in the nineties on a Finnish cable channel (Finland is weird, we know). I had a faint recollection about Dani Filth’s singing voice being different, which was self-evident from the beginning of the gig. After the amazement of how someone can keep making such sounds without permanent laryngeal damage fades, one is left with a highly polarizing singing style, which for me got boring rather fast. Excluding the band’s most distinctive feature, I was left with really good bits and really ’meh’ parts, which didn’t quite fit together to make a working whole. The better riffing parts were combined with weird female vocal parts and other distractions, leaving the end result feeling disjointed. The fans, of which there was a LOT, seemed to be really into it though, but I personally feel that it is a disadvantage for any band to play after such an earth-shattering warm-up act.

Report a cura di Markus Karppinen