Live Review: Amorphis & Soilwork - Saarbrücken 2019

Garage, Saarbrücken, Germany
14th February 2019
Amorphis & Soilwork, Jinjer, Nailed to Obscurity

Great things were announced for yesterday night in the Garage, namely the double headliner tour of AMORPHIS and SOILWORK. The two Nordic Metal veterans were accompanied by the Ukrainians JINJER and the Germans NAILED TO OBSCURITY. An extremely big package, no wonder that many preferred this concert to a romantic dinner on Valentine’s Day.


Nailed to Obscurity

NAILED TO OBSCURITY, the opener of the evening, a Melodic-Death-Doom Metal band from East Frisia, heated up the already surprisingly big crowd surely very well. Unfortunately, I missed this band. The reason was a traffic jam of more than 5km on the A8 before Merzig, so that I was in a traffic jam for more than one hour. Nevertheless I was in the right mood to celebrate with JINJER.


Jinjer

JINJER is a Ukrainian Metalcore band formed in 2009. Their playing style incorporates elements of Death Metal, Progressive Rock and Nu Metal. While explaining their influences, the band has noted other Metal acts like OPETH, KARNIVOOL and TEXTURES, in addition to groups across the spectrum of R&B, Soul and Hip-Hop such as CYPRESS HILL. Since their inception, the band has released three full-length albums and three extended plays.



Music & Performance
Definitely not only as a support act, but also a highlight on this tour are JINJER: The newcomers from the Ukraine are currently on everyone’s mind. In fact, the show soon made the crowd forget that only the second band of the evening was on stage. The powerful and differentiated sound blew the audience away, and JINJER also did a lot right in other respects: tacky Djent-Riffing meets aggressive Metalcore, but also some quiet parts. With musical influences from the areas of Funk, Reggae, Jazz and Hip-Hop, the quartet found its very own sound. The focus, however, was undoubtedly on the graceful fronter Tatiana Shmayluk with her powerful voice, which sometimes reminds of Alissa White-Gluz (ARCH ENEMY), sometimes of Sandra Nasić (GUANO APES). She mastered not only the melodic but also the guttural singing in perfection.



In the 45-minute show the audience ate out of the band’s hand. From Wall of Death to Mosh Pit - everyone got their money’s worth.

Setlist
01. Words Of Wisdom
02. Ape
03. I Speak Astronomy
04. Dreadful Moments
05. Teacher, Teacher
06. Who's Gonna Be The One
07. Pisces
08. Perennial
09. Sit Stay Roll Over

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 8
Sound: 7
Light: 5
Total: 7.3 / 10

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Soilwork

SOILWORK is a Swedish Heavy Metal band from Helsingborg. They are signed to Nuclear Blast. Formed in late 1995 by Björn Strid and Peter Wichers, originally under the name INFERIOR BREED, the band changed their name in late 1996 to SOILWORK (meaning “working from the ground up”).



Music & Performance
After a rather long time of change and waiting the Swedes from SOILWORK came on stage, the veterans of melodic-aggressive Metal who have been active since the 1990s. The band members gradually came in front of the audience for the intro ‘Verkligheten’, until finally Björn Strid walked casually along, greeted the frenetically cheering audience and started off with ‘Arrival’. ‘The Crestfallen’ and ‘Nerve’ played it safe after the beginning with new material, the album ‘Stabbing the drama’ should be familiar to every halfway serious SOILWORK fan. The mood in the meanwhile fuller Garage is excellent, the band played very engaged which also affects the audience. The setlist was the finest for fans anyway with its cross-section of seven albums and a light weight on ‘Verkligheten’. Björn’s vocals were flawless that night. The new songs fitted perfectly live into the older material, and the big finale of ‘Stabbing the drama’ and ‘Stålfågel’ (old and new) was really fun.



SOILWORK did everything right. The audience cheered to the Swedes a lot at the end and had hopefully some strength left for the band everyone was feverishly waiting for hours: AMORPHIS.

Setlist
01. Arrival
02. The Crestfallen
03. Nerve
04. Full Moon Shoals
05. Death In General
06. Like The Average Stalker
07. The Akuma Afterglow
08. Drowning With Silence
09. The Phantom
10. The Nurturing Glance
11. Bastard Chain
12. As We Speak
13. The Living Infinite II
14. Witan
15. Stabbing The Drama
16. Stålfågel

Rating
Music: 8
Performance: 8
Sound: 8
Light: 8
Total: 8 / 10

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Amorphis

AMORPHIS is a Finnish Heavy Metal band founded by Jan Rechberger, Tomi Koivusaari, and Esa Holopainen in 1990. Initially, the band was a Death Metal act, but on later albums they evolved into playing other genres, including Heavy Metal, Progressive Metal, and Folk Metal. They frequently use the Kalevala, the epic poem of Finland, as a source for their lyrics.



Music & Performance
The stage was soaked in blue and with an epic intro the individual band members of AMORPHIS entered the stage. The banner in the background, which showed the album cover of the album ‘Queen of Time’, shined in a different way with each song - a beautiful play of colours that perfectly matched to each song and thus created a round stage setting. From the first note of ‘The bee’ the audiences freaked out, Tomi Koivusaari on the rhythm guitar played his riffs in deep relaxation, returnee and original member Olli-Pekka Laine seemed as if he had been on stage with the boys for the last 28 years and not done something else in between 17 years, Jan “Snoopy” Rechberger drummed his soul out of his body, Santeri Kallio sat enthroned behind his keyboards with a happy grin, and Esa Holopainen casually conjured one mad melody after another out of his guitar.



The right foot supported on the gallery, the microphone stand lifted up with the left hand, the song ‘Sacrifice’ was picturesquely underpinned. The crowning finale and also the highlight of the evening were definitely the Finns. When ‘Message In The Amber’ sounded, there was no stopping. The Finnish Metal band from Helsinki obviously enjoyed the concert just as much as their visitors do. The band brought along a setlist that left nothing to be desired. The songs of the current album ‘Queen Of Time’ were shooting at least as well as the classics ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Bad Blood’. And once the steamroller AMORPHIS was in motion, nothing could stop it, always brutal and always forward. ‘Death of a King’ and ‘House of Sleep’ were the culmination of a great evening coming to an end. The song was introduced with oriental sounds.



This encore demanded the last energy reserves and released the crowd a little later into the coming weekend full of euphoria. The last tones faded out.

Setlist
01. The Bee
02. The Golden Elk
03. Sky Is Mine
04. Sacrifice
05. Message In The Amber
06. Silver Bride
07. Bad Blood
08. Wrong Direction
09. Daughter Of Hate
10. Heart Of The Giant
11. Hopeless Days
12. Black Winter Day
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13. Death Of A King
14. House Of Sleep

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 8
Sound: 8
Light: 8
Total: 8.3 / 10

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All Pictures by Elena Arens