Magnet, Berlin, Germany
4th March 2013
Agrypnie, Der Weig einer Freiheit, Heretoir
Last year, AGRYPNIE played a tour with HELRUNAR and THE VISION BLEAK, promising to be back again as the headliner. And so they were on this rather cold Monday night in Berlin. The Magnet Club was really crowed, almost leaving no space to stand and let your hair fly to the great music. The band was accompanied by HERETOIR and DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT, which promised to be great set-up for an evening filled with excellent music. And we were not disappointed as the first tones of HERETOIR were played at around 8 o’clock…
Heretoir
HERETOIR is a German post-black metal band founded by Eklatanz in 2006. The band’s name, consisting of “here-” from the English word “heretic” and the French syllable “-toir”, is a fictional synonym for “going an own way”. Conceptually, HERETOIR deals with melancholy, nostalgia, isolation and self-reflection. The music is meant to be a soundtrack for discovering one’s deepest thoughts, fears and the soul that rests in each one of us. The band’s beginnings were rooted in pure acoustic music but HERETOIR quickly evolved into a combination of aggressive elements of Black Metal and the beauty, melancholy and reverie of Post Rock and Shoegaze. In its broadness the music conveys the daily myriad of feelings and impressions that our multifaceted world confronts us with. http://heretoir.com/ / www.facebook.com/heretoir
Music & Performance
The first act of three on that great evening to come was HERETOIR. As an actual one man project it was great to see the line-up been extended to a harmonious live band. From the moment they started to play, the atmosphere of melancholy their music intentionally creates grasped the audience and held it for the performance of about 40 minutes. Eklatanz, mastermind of the band, was accompanied by Belial (drums), M. (guitar) and Nathanael from the band THRÄNENKIND (bass, backing vocals). Normally I don’t draw parallels to other bands that fast, but in the case of HERETOIR I dare to say that for me they are the German pendant to France’s ALCEST. Although they weave a slightly denser sound, they manage with great success to get across a vast amount of emotions though cleverly thought through arrangements and the smart mixture of clean chants and harsh vocals. The highlight of the set was the song ‘Heretoir’, in which the band could shine with all their variety. The Magnet Club did them justice and I think they exactly came across as they wanted to with a warm, rich and organic sound. Although some hair occasional was already flying most of the audience gave in to the soundscape by just absorbing the aura the music emitted. 
Since the band currently is working on their forthcoming second full-length record there also was a brand new instrumental track called ‘Inhale’, which concluded the short but intensive set greatly. Everyone who wanted to hear more new material could do so at the merchandise stand outside via headphones.
Setlist
01. Intro (Eclipse)
02. Eclipse
03. Graue Bauten
04. Fatigue
05. Wiedersehen
06. Heretoir
07. Inhale
Rating
Music: 9.5
Performance: 9.5
Sound: 9
Light: 6.5
Total: 9 / 10
Der Weg einer Freiheit
The band DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT was founded by Kamprad and Jaschinsky. In 2009, they quickly released their first album ‘Der Weg einer Freiheit’. Having done that in their own studio, the record was re-released via Viva Hate Records one year later. After some changes in the line-up the band and the release of a new EP ‘Agonie’, the band went up the career ladder and played with bands like WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER or NEAERA and attended many well-known festivals like the Summer Breeze. Last year, the band released their second long-player ‘Unstille’. After that, the singer left the band was replaced by Nikita Kamprad who also plays the guitar. In 2013, the band toured with HERETOIR and AGRYPNIE through Germany, Switzerland and Austria. http://derwegeinerfreiheit.wordpress.com/ / http://www.facebook.com/derwegeinerfreiheit
Music & Performance
If HERETOIR’s performance was like a dreamy, dreary autumn day, then DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT’s would be a hailstorm on a harsh winter’s eve. Although music wise they are not that different from each other, DWEF floored the gas pedal and presented us some of the finest black metal Germany has to offer these days. Since the departure of vocalist Tobias in October I was eager to see them perform as a four piece with guitarist and musical head Nikita taking over the singing part as well. Not that I was surprised, but I have to admit he did well doing so besides his usual tremendous performance on the six strings. Drummer Tobias did a superb job as well considering the velocity and blast beat frequencies delivered. However doing that every night for two weeks seems not to be fully satisfying for him, hence he offered additional drum lessons on each tour date. Great! The PA did justice to the performance with a cutting, direct but transparent sound. 
After the critically acclaimed ‘Unstille’ (which even Mille of KREATOR commended) I also wanted to see if the songs turn out as great on stage as on record. The amount of head-bangers confirmed my assumption. I enjoyed i.e. the atmospherically various ‘Vergängnis’ very much, but my personal favourites that evening would still be previous masterpieces such as ‘Der stille Fluss’, ‘Posthum’ and ‘Neubeginn’, which was the last song played and passed the audience over to AGRYPNIE. DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT played a great gig with a well-balanced setlist that left nothing to be desired. Only in terms of audience communication I see some possible improvement.
Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 9.5
Sound: 9.5
Light: 7
Total: 9 / 10
Agrypnie
AGRYPNIE started off as a solo project by front man Torsten Hirsch. He released the first album ‘F51.4’ in 2006 with the help of Marcel Traumschänder, the guitarist and writer of NOCTE OBDUCTA, in regards of the texting. The second album called ‘Exit’ was released in August 2008, containing 11 songs. This time, also Torsten took over the part of writing the texts, accompanied by again Marcel Traumschänder. Also, a drummer joined the band, René Schott. Two years later, ‘16[485]’ was released and continued the good reviews ‘Exit’ got before. 2011, the band played its first Nightliner Tour with the Austrian band DORNENREICH, playing at full clubs in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In November, the band released an EP called ‘Asche’ as a teaser for the upcoming album that had to be postponed due to different reasons. Again, the line-up changes. This year, the band finally released their fourth album ‘Aetas Cineris’ via Supreme Chaos Records. http://agrypnie.de/ / http://www.facebook.com/agrypnie.official
Music & Performance
Front man Torsten himself brought it up: The year before, AGRYPNIE were touring with HELRUNAR and headliners THE VISION BLEAK throughout Germany and promised they would return on the forthcoming tour as headliners themselves. Almost exactly one year later they came back to Berlin to keep their vow. The location changed as well as some of the line-up and (most importantly) the song catalogue but the music remained as great as before. With their fourth full-length record ‘Aetas Cineris’ freshly pressed and printed, the visitors were able to purchase the album before the official release on march 15th. That also meant this concert (despite the ones played the days before) was the first opportunity to enjoy the new songs. Although the band certainly would have loved to perform the whole album, they confined themselves to play some chosen few, mixed with great pieces from the previous albums, which was a wise choice. They opened with ‘Figur 109-3’, ‘Der tote Trakt’ and ‘Kadavergehorsam’ (the exact start of the last record ‘16[485]’) to get the people going. That paid off: The amount of flying hair was even greater than with the DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT. Form the first moment on you could feel the passion, devotion and energy put into the performance.
Once again the sound exactly turned out to be the one the music demanded: transparent but forceful in the low frequency areas and greatly balanced, considering the keyboard usage. That instrument was handled by NOCTE OBDUCTA’s Flange who joined the band in August and did a solid job, as well as the rest of the band; especially René on the drums showed a very tight performance. On the left side of the stage you had a déjà vu: Nathanael and Eklatanz/ Dave playing their second performance tonight, delivering as great as on the first one. Torsten himself appeared on stage with white contact lenses and some extra white make-up which under certain light conditions gave him an otherworldly appearance that contributed to his intense performance. With ‘Trümmer’, the first new song premiered that evening. After 3 albums and 1 EP of great songs I wouldn’t have expected it to be less than an outstanding track and of course I wasn’t disappointed. The song reminded me of ‘Kadavergehorsam’ without being too similar but capturing the essence of what AGRYPNIE is and taking it further with its inherent melancholy and distress dynamically bursting into aggression and despair. Since the last EP ‘Asche’, “ashes” seem to be the metaphorical focus of the lyrics. So you can find it mentioned here as well as other songs and even ‘Aetas Cineris’ translates to “age of ash”. The other two new songs, ‘Zurück’ und ‘Asche’ (I think which was played in a shorted version), showed the versatile qualities of the band with great acoustic parts and were in no way inferior and very enjoyable to say the least.
With ‘0545’ and ‘Schlaf’ two songs were put to stage that were seldom to never performed before and I especially enjoyed the latter one. Torsten occasionally laid hand on his guitar when the song demanded it to bring and extra layer of depth or thrust to the music. As an announced encore the band performed the great ‘Gnosis’, which the fans already new from the ‘Asche EP’, AGRYPNIE proved why they deserved the headliner position and ended the gig after a comparatively short but intense set with some more great music. There's only one thing left to say: Thank you for the great gig and - we are nothing more than ashes.
Setlist
01. Figur 109-3
02. Der tote Trakt
03. Kadavergehorsam
04. Trümmer
05. 0545
06. Schlaf
07. Zurück
08. Asche
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09. Gnosis
Rating
Music: 10
Performance: 9.5
Sound: 9.5
Light: 7
Total: 9 / 10
All pictures by Anne Kuhfuß
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