Having never heard of enKelination, I had no idea what to expect, but the fact that there was a queue to enter the Underworld this early certainly boded well. When the band slipped on stage under cover of darkness and proceeded to play very slow inoffensive guitar riffs they still weren’t giving very much away, but as Finnish front-woman Elina joined them and began to sing, it was apparent that her voice was to be the focal point here. As a former opera singer, she has amazing control of her voice and quite a range to accompany it. Guitar wise Shadow and Jozef keep things rather simple rather going for mood with mellow, but occasionally heavy riffs, unlike Alasdair as he plays about 4 times as many notes at twice the speed on his bass whilst accompanying Ben’s drumming. I found their stuff very easy to listen to, however in a bit of a somnolent way, or perhaps that’s just “Lullaby”. Letting us know that they’d just released a music video for “Tears of Lust” http://youtu.be/ZjGYWSW1rrE from their soon to be released début, they proceeded to play their final number for the night. Elina then thanked us profusely for turning up early to catch their set as they retired from the stage.
I really liked the way Winterstorm took to the stage one at a time with each instrument being added to the song individually on what I can only assume was “A Hero Rises” before I’m guessing it rolled into “Cathyron” where Alex bounded on stage wearing some interesting shoulder armour. Now I know that most power metal bands take themselves way too seriously, but from the fact that these guys were all syncro-headbanging before the first chorus said volumes about the fact they were just here to have a blast. Peter’s bass had a nice boomy quality to it that really fattened up Sebb’s high speed footwork allowing Michi and Armin to trade leads throughout songs seamlessly. They worked their way rather energetically through their set with the large easy grins of a band really enjoying what they were doing with a mixture of songs old and new, amongst them “The Stormsons”, “Kings Will Fall” and “Winterheart” and even more fist pumping than I thought possible. All 5 of them were singing on “Metalavial”, which I swear sounded like they were saying ‘Metal Albion’, and this wouldn’t be the last time during the night where 5 vocalists were singing simultaneously. They were supposedly trying to upload the video just before the show, but had it fail. (It appears to be up on http://youtu.be/qHS3hpEZYBE now though.) Don’t quote me on this, but I think they finished their set with “Into the Light” and were hoping to come back for an encore which sadly wasn’t to be, owing to time constraints.
Incidentally, as I was leaving the venue, I was stopped by Sebb and informed that the 13 year old T-shirt I was wearing listed his and Peter’s first band, Circle of Grief, on the back.
After just over a quarter of an hour of near darkness during which the support bands’ drum kit was removed, Van Canto finally waltzed onto the amp free stage to raucous applause and the “Dawn of the Brave” before breaking out into “Fight for Your Life”. Staying on their latest release they sang the first single “Badaboom” which had the packed venue explode into song. Sorry, but that had to be done. Their first cover for the night had Inga take centre stage for their rendition of Nightwish’s “Wishmaster” that appears to have been enjoyed as much by them as the writhing throng at their feet. The rather tongue in cheek “Steel Breaker” followed, with Sly donning shades and a leather jacket to complete the required look. The Grave Digger song “Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching)” came next, along plenty of banter from Stefan between “To Sing a Metal Song” and “The Other Ones”. Once the 5 vocalists had left the stage Bastian emerged from behind the kit to get the ladies to rakkatakka and gents to badaboom before sitting down again to tattoo his drums with a healthy beating. The rest of the sextet returned to sing two more songs from the new album in the form of “To the Mountains” and “Unholy” before Inga and Sly left, for Ross to do the main and very animated vocals on “Paranoid” while Stefan continued with his rakkatakkas and wah-wah, and Ingo the doom a bass. There was a chap standing in front of me wearing a Sabaton T that went berserk when they began to sing “Primo Victoria”. Informing us that they’d come to the end of their set and that they were going to end it with long old song, so heading back to their 2006 début they sang “The Mission” which happened to now contain “Master of Puppets” as a pleasant bridge in the middle of the song. After a couple minutes of chanting Stefan returned to ask whether the chanting implied we wished for them to continue, which of course we did, so they treated us to “If I Die in Battle”. Sadly, owing to a self-imposed curfew, I had to leave halfway through their rendition of “Fear of the Dark”; thereby cutting my evening short and missing anything else they played.
Now while an acapella metal band may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the turn out for this gig suggests that they certainly have a healthy following, and are immense fun to watch pull everything off live sans guitars.
(Marco Gaminara)
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