Intohimo

support Inimical
author TL date 07/08/08 venue Lades Kælder, Copenhagen, DEN

Intohimo is a band I'm sure is only known by a relatively small minority of people, scattered out mostly over Danish and Swedish soil, not surprisingly, seeing as they're a very young Swedish band with only one album under their belt. An album however, that had me blown away when it was released last year, and I was very very positively surprised to learn that they had a show at the small bar "Lades" in central Copenhagen.

After enjoying a late summer afternoon in the city accompanied by a couple of friends and a handful of beers, I come upon the 20 or so people who know the band outside of Lades, waiting for it to open at 9 o'clock. As they open there's the usual commodity of such a small event, with people checking out the makeshift merch stand and sharing pints with all the familiar faces.. The 'scene' is rather small over here after all.

Inimical

Before Intohimo go on though, there's another band on stage. They are local and their name is Inimical, and from what I can tell, they play death metal for the sake of it. Now I guess there's a chance for you all to tell me what a horribly biased and lazy journalist I am, but fact remains that I honestly wasn't that interested in their set, so I settled for a seat behind their supporters, checking them out only over a beer and a conversation from friends. From what you can hear on the band's myspace, they're really just your typical metallers, playing at heaviness with little purpose other than doing so, and on this night, there's really nothing going on to counter that notion. It's the classic story of a gang of musicians who are technically proficient but lack anything resembling a distinguishable identity. I for one can't find much reason to recommend their show just yet. Also their myspace "Sounds Like" says "fucking evil metal". That's pretty funny.

Intohimo

Obviously, the arrival of the Swedes on stage marks a significant change in the amount of attention I'm paying to what's going on, and I jump to the front, ready to live out a long-harbored urge to go crazy to the songs I loved on Intohimo's debut. As they launch into it, it's quickly obvious that this is by no means the first show they play, handling themselves confidently despite their young age and the small size of the crowd. Alas, there's one major problem, and that is that from where I'm standing, the sound is absolutely shit. It gradually becomes apparent to me that the band is playing mostly songs from an upcoming new record, but in the beginning I just can't tell because the guitars are a noisy mess and the cleaner vocal parts are buried way under them. There's a good energy to the performance, just as you'd expect from a band like this, but I think I speak for the fans of the band and their debut, when I say that we were mildly disappointed by the shortness of the set, and the inclusion of only three (if I'm not mistaken, it was honestly hard to hear) tracks from that record. I'm terribly sorry to say this, because I really wanted to be able to push these guys further, but the experience tonight was one of few that serve to deny the saying that "smaller gigs are better", and I can only hope for Intohimo to make it a bit bigger on their next release, so we can see them do a show with proper sound, and hopefully a bit more people in slightly larger venue.

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