After The Burial

support Monuments + Circles + Tides From Nebula
author MBC date 07/11/14 venue KB18, Copenhagen, DEN

While PP went to Århus to cover the much-anticipated Never Say Die Tour, I stayed in Copenhagen to check out After The Burial along with three opening acts. After The Burial played in Copenhagen just last year on a tour with Born Of Osiris that brought them to Beta, where they played a pretty damn awesome show. With this performance in mind I had high hopes for this show in KB18, Kødbyen and the interesting line-up of four different bands. Unfortunately, none of our photographers were available, so the review will not feature pictures.

Tides From Nebula

I arrived at 8 o’clock, just as the doors to the venue were about to open. The place was pretty much deserted and I had a bad feeling about tonight’s turnout. About fifteen minutes after the doors opened, the evening’s first act Tides From Nebula took the stage. They were playing in front of maybe fifteen people, which was a shame considering how interesting the band’s music actually is. The Polish band plays a form of progressive rock/metal mixed with a bit of post-hardcore, and it is instrumental to boot. For a band without a singer, they did a good job of conveying a lot of emotion in their music, which alternates between sweet melancholy and crushing heaviness. The band moved from the epic to the minimalistic with ease and even though it was the most introvert act of the evening, it was certainly one of the more interesting. Unfortunately, the sound at times was awful and almost painful to listen to, and the musical details hard to make out. The venue’s acoustics obviously did not do much for the wall of sound of Tides From Nebula, but the band played really well and the few people watching the set seemed to be digging it.

7

Circles

Next up was the band Circles that plays djent-y metal mixed with electronics. The band took the stage at about 9 o’clock with the room still not even quarter filled. Again the sound was terrible making it almost impossible to decipher the instruments from each other. Especially the vocals suffered from this, with the volume being way low and greatly lacking in impact. The vocalist often seemed unable to hear himself resulting in a slew of notes that were out of pitch. He is a good singer with interesting melodic vocal lines and strong screams, but his performance was sup par tonight. The band played with good energy and the small crowd in front got into it, despite the lack of acknowledgement from the band.

Monuments

Apparently the drummer from the next act, djent/metalcore band Monuments, fell ill before the performance and could not play. But the show must go on and rather than cancelling, the band decided to play with one of their buddies on drums instead. Unfortunately, because of this, and maybe due to time hurrying on as well, Monuments could only play four songs. Following a weird sampling intro and some confusion on stage, the band finally started playing. Although the audience sadly only got to see four songs, at least they were great ones, and the band gave the best performance of the night so far. Although still not great, the sound was much better than with Circles, especially on the powerfully screamed vocals. The crowd got much more into it and the performance featured the first mosh of the night and collective jump session from the “get the fuck up!” command of vocalist Chris Barretto. Monuments’ music has a tremendous groove that seems great to go nuts to in front of a stage, and the band’s performance, although short, had a really good connection with the crowd. Monuments promised that they would return next year with Karnivool, which got a big reaction from the crowd.

7

After The Burial

After a very long waiting period, the main event of the evening finally made their entrance to the stage at about 22.45. The room had filled up a bit more by this point, but the venue was still not even half filled. Maybe it was other events such as Aalborg Metal Festival or the Never Say Die Tour that had attracted the Copenhagen metal crowd, or maybe people were just drunk off their asses from J-Dag. In any case, the turnout for this evening was sad. Luckily the band seemed keen on entertaining the faithful in front of the stage anyway. After The Burial no doubt was the heaviest band of the evening, but they also gave the best performance. The music is djent-core with plenty of groove, with one guitarist usually playing one note chug-riffs while the other plays more technical parts over it. This is an effective formula, albeit somewhat repetitive, but the music got the crowd going and it was easy to see, who the majority of the people had come to see. The sound was better and more condensed than with the other bands, especially on the guitars, and lead singer Anthony Notarmaso got several mosh pits going with his super brutal screams, including one that had people running around the dangerous wooden pillars on the floor. About halfway through the band’s set, the sound became excruciating to listen to which the band noticed and stopped playing. This yet again meant more waiting around for the issue to get fixed, and by this point I was fed up with the sound problems of KB18. After The Burial gave the best performance of the night and entertained the crowd, but overall this was not a fantastic evening.

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