Live Review: Bullet For My Valentine - Hamburg 2023

Sporthalle, Hamburg, Germany
4th February 2023
Bullet For My Valentine & Special Guests: Jinjer and Atreyu

Metal came to Sporthalle Hamburg on Saturday February 4th, 2023, with a night of shows gathering BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE, JINJER and ATREYU on the same stage! Some say its Metalcore, some say its Thrash and others call it Heavy Metal, but we say it’s BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE. Great musicians with good musical taste, great fans, the pandemic is over and it is finally time for all to meet together. Matthew Tuck, Michael Paget, Jason Bowld and Jamie Mathias are on the road through Europe. The BULLETS started out in 1998 as a NIRVANA and METALLICA cover band under a different name, but today they are a well-known name in the Metal(core) business.

The warm-ups include the US-Americans ATREYU and the Ukrainians JINJER. California Metal core band ATREYU have eight albums under their belt. ATREYU took the opportunity to perform some tracks from their latest album, ‘Baptize’. With JINJER, it’s rather the exception these days that you get to experience a Ukrainian band on tour, so we couldn’t miss this event. 


Atreyu

When ATREYU took to the stage, Sporthalle was already full. The fans were standing close to each other, eagerly awaiting the start of the concert. The excitement caused by the support band’s performance was reminiscent of the times when ATREYU could headline even in a place like Sporthalle. The mass cheers of the fans certainly sounded as if some of them had made the journey here today for the Americans. The band let themselves get warmed up and played with huge excitement from the first second. With the song ‘Drowning’ you could even be heard premiering live. The song and video were only released a few days before the concert. The audience rewarded the performance with thunderous applause.

Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 7
Sound: 7
Light: 8
Total: 7 / 10

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Jinjer

JINJER is undoubtedly the modern and in-demand Metal band of the present. The Ukrainian combo has become an international top artist in a very short time, released on Napalm Records. However, the bar has to be kept up, and it’s certainly a big responsibility and challenge for the band. In Ukraine, the band is treated ambiguously. Because of their vague position on Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine, at least at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces. However, the European public is not aware of all these nuances and evaluates the band only on the basis of their music and performance.



Music & Performance
With deadly precision, JINJER bring down one riff after another. Perhaps the band’s sound is simply too cerebral for today’s audience. The spotlight is on front woman Tatiana Shmailyuk, whose bright green bodysuit catches the attention of everyone in the audience as it begins to glow in the dark. Vocally, she is at her best and impresses with powerful screams and stylistically confident clean vocals that, unlike many of her competitors, never slip into kitsch. JINJER are unequivocally professionals and although the reactions in the hall were varied, we can safely say that they also gained new fans here in Hamburg on this night.



Setlist
01. Who’s Gonna Be the One
02. Copycat
03. Home Back
04. Judgement (& Punishment)
05. Pit of Consciousness
06. Perennial
07. Dead Hands Feel No Pain
08. Pisces
09. Call Me a Symbol

Rating
Music: 7
Performance: 10
Sound: 8
Light: 10
Total: 8.8 / 10

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Bullet For My Valentine

Before the headliner starts, SYSTEM OF A DOWN’s ‘Chop Suey’ and SLIPKNOT’s ‘Duality’ blare out from the speakers. Meanwhile, loudly singing fans give a foretaste of what’s to follow. BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE frontman Matthew Tuck and bassist Jamie Mathias, responsible for the second voice, could have stayed away from the microphone altogether, so confident is the audience taking their lyrics and singing along to all the songs…



Music & Performance
The vocal interaction between them works perfectly today. The polyphonic singing in particular is damn good. In the ballad ‘All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)’, which probably evokes nostalgic feelings for many, Matthias is even allowed to take over the entire first verse. On stage, he really does seem to be the band's second frontman at times. After songs from the current album ‘Bullet For My Valentine’ and its predecessor ‘Gravity’ dominate the beginning of the set list, ‘4 Words (To Choke Upon)’ provides the first truly enthusiastic reaction. Not two seconds in, the fans burst into cheers of approval. This is where all the memories of their youth become active.



Ahead of their live tour, the band showed that intimacy is important to them. After all, fans were allowed to vote on which songs that hadn’t been played in a while should be included. ‘Hearts Burst Into Fire’ is one of those songs that is gratefully received by the audience. After a sweaty 60 minutes, the band leave the stage but soon return for three encores. The unbreakable ‘Tears Don’t Fall’ and ‘Your Betrayal’, and the crunchy bouncer ‘Waking The Demon’ unleash thousands of cheering fans into the night.

Setlist
01. Knives
02. Over It
03. Piece of Me
04. 4 Words (to Choke Upon)
05. You Want a Battle? (Here’s a War)
06. Hearts Burst Into Fire
07. The Last Fight
08. Shatter
09. All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)
10. Scream Aim Fire
11. Suffocating Under Words of Sorrow (What Can I Do)
12. Rainbow Veins
13. Don’t Need You
14. Death By A Thousand Cuts
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15. Your Betrayal
16. Tears Don’t Fall (Acoustic Singalong Intro)
17. Waking the Demon

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 10
Sound: 8
Light: 10
Total: 9.3 / 10

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All Pictures by Iryna Kalenska