Szene, Vienna, Austria27th November, 2015
Avatarium, The Vintage Caravan, Honeymoon Disease
The restless Swedish band AVATARIUM at the head with Leif Edling (ex. Candlemass) don’t let their fan’s army wait too long and gave as the Autumn’s present new album “The Girl With The Raven Mask”. Immediately, after the release, band with two supportive “brothers in arms” from Scandinavia. And the first time for the band in Austria couldn’t be any better.
Honeymoon Disease
HONEYMOON DISEASE is a young groove-rock act from Gothenburg released their first album ‘The Transcendence’ in November, 2015, the first LP they released on Napalm Records. The appearance of the band give us glance to the 1970s and the sound reminds of old times, dense atmosphere and Woodstock Festival at its origin. Two energetic women are in charge of guitar and vocals. The band’s line-up is Jenna (vocals & guitar), Acid (guitar), Nick (bass) and Jimi (drums). http://www.honeymoondisease.com / https://www.facebook.com/HoneymoonDisease
Music & Performance
The quartet had a very responsible mission - to prepare the audience and to put it in the right mood for the evening. Powerful and yet with charming Jenna’s vocal, groovy and massive guitar riffs, emotionally this four did their best on stage. At the end of their set it felt that this tiny, tickling spark has, for sure, slashed between band and gathering audience in the club, closer to the stage. In my opinion, HONEYMOON DISEASE is not the right start for AVATARIUM although, the band itself is good enough as a live act and gives the sense of time travel.
The Vintage Caravan
The Icelandic trio, who lives now not far from German border in Denmark, appears to be adept of classic and progressive rock with big touch of psychedelic rhythms and smell of 70-s. THE VINTAGE CARAVAN has three full length albums so far: ‘The Vintage Caravan’ (2009), ‘Voyage’ (2012) and the newest one, ‘Arrival’ (2015), which they recorded with Nuclear Blast. Nowadays the band consist of Óskar Logi on vocals and guitar, Alexander Örn Númason on bass, back vocals and newcomer drummer Stefán Ari. The band had already participated in well-known metal festivals such as Wacken Open Air, Roadburn Festival, and Hard Rock Hell. The front man of the band, Óskar Logi, even played in Ragnar Bragason’s movie ‘Metalhead’ in 2013. http://www.thevintagecaravan.eu / https://www.facebook.com/vintagecaravan
Music & Performance
From the beginning of the performance, the band let the audience knew that there is going to be a wild and reckless show. Three guys on stage made the impression of a huge metal army and showed attentiveness to every person in venue. After the third song it began to be hotter in first rows. The bass player Alexander was not only making his job at its best, but also was a kind of actor on stage, playing with and for people. Between the songs the audience was loudly asking to play their favorite songs and talk in Icelandic. In addition to high rate performance, the sound seemed to materialize and enshrouded fans of the band and the rest of the crowd with massive wave of guitars riffs.
As an encore, THE VINTAGE CARAVAN performed the hit from the new album ‘Expand Your Mind’ which started from breathtaking drum solo of Stefan. After the show band invited everybody to visit their merchandise stand for CDs, vinyl, just good words, beer and hugs.
Setlist
01. Craving
02. Babylon
03. Let Me Be
04. Winterland
05. Last Day of Light
06. Expand Your Mind
Avatarium
The Swedish band was founded in 2012 by Leif Edling (ex. CANDLEMASS) with Mikael Åkerfeldt who left the band very soon to continue with OPETH. So, Leif involved a guitarist from EVERGREY Marcus Jidell, keyboard player from KRUX Carl Westholm and drummer from TIAMAT Lars Sköld. Jennie-Ann Smith, the wife of Marcus Jidell and a singer with jazz-blues roots, became the voice of AVATARIUM. Since that time the band released two full length albums and two EPs, giving the listeners magic still very professional mixture of metal, doom, melodic and poetic metal with strong influence of psychedelic rock. http://avatariumofficial.com / https://www.facebook.com/avatariumofficial
Music & Performance
After 30 minutes interval between the bands, the lights got lower and the show, more felt like shamanic action, began. In the middle of the scene in phantasmal blue light appeared the figure in long black cloak with white maracas... and long and mysterious intro for ‘Ghostlight’ has begun. The lyrics, sang by Jennie-Ann, sounded almost like prophecy right on the stage and the audience, enchanted by the voice, started to believe every line from the song. Jennie-Ann moved in very shamanic attractive way throughout all song.
AVATARIUM warmly greeted their fans and deeply thanked for being here as it was the first time for the band in Austria. The songs from new album, ‘The Girl with Raven Mask’, had received as much acceptance as old songs. A lot of people were in t-shirts from last tour of AVATARIUM with AMORPHIS with the image of the ‘All I want’ CD cover and obviously much of them came from different countries. On this tour AVATARIUM took Anders Iwers from TIAMAT as a bass player, who brought a lot of mature charm with his presence and professional play.
The vocalist was as much artistic as dynamic and after new song the well-known ‘Bird of Prey’ after which lyrical and heart touching ‘January Sea’ has begun and overwhelmed the crowd with elegy and lyric mood. But it was a short calm before the storm of explosive ‘All I Want’, which made the entire audience dance and shout. Gig moved on like a sea tides: from chilling calm to the storm of all ages, from precise attention to dissolving in rhythms and voice. And this state what definitely brought by ‘Pearls and Coffins’, one of the very catchy track from new album. In the middle of the show Jannie-Ann changed her costume, took off the cloak, after returning from backstage she appeared with one naked hand and the other hand was covered with white feathers making hint.
The band ended its set with almost acoustic ‘Moonhorse’ when Jannie took an acoustic guitar and draw all attention to the centre of the stage, playing the main theme in the backlight. After this song, as a conclusion, on the very high peak all five left the stage just to be back in a minute summoned by the fans with shouts and loud applause. As the encore, AVATARIUM performed the song from the first album with the same title, ‘Avatarium’, and made the most from this last song a long epic “goodbye” with Marcus and Anders improvisation. After the gig it felt like the long magic journey has ended, but five heroes had materialised in our world and everybody could just expressed them the admiration, ask for some autographs and pictures.
Setlist
01. Ghostlight
02. Girl With the Raven Mask
03. Bird of Prey
04. The January Sea
05. All I Want
06. Pearls and Coffins
07. Master Thief
08. Run Killer Run
09. Deep Well
10. Moonhorse
11. Avatarium
Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 10
Sound: 8
Light: 9
Total: 9 / 10
All Pictures by Liudmyla Radyk
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