What is it like to attend a heavy metal concert without having listened to the group before? If you’re lucky, the experience might resemble our report.
“What do you think of Tribulation? To be honest, I’ve never really listened to them on a larger scale … somehow the group has slipped through the cracks or, maybe, has been overshadowed by it’s Swedish cousin In Flames, or on a second thought, the Swedish second cousin Ghost.
Just a few hours before Tribulation’s gig in Helsinki’s On the Rocks rock club, I was looking for answers in a social media chat from a hardcore heavymetal enthusiast I had met at a wedding a while back while sipping wine and whiskey and watching the lovely couple swear eternal love.
“Well … I haven’t listened to them much either. I may have posted some of their songs in social media while drunk.”
“In that case, I will have to attend the gig, see for myself and report later.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
The down floor of On the Rocks was crowded. The room was filled with incense smoke. People with long beards and arms covered with tattooes were nodding their heads and making devil’s horns when ever it felt like it.
These people did not seem drunk, rather, they appeared captivated by the strong sound and the voice of the frontman, Johannes Andersson, who could easily shift from a deep growl to a low baritone A2.
The gig on a Thursday night turned out to be one of the heaviest heavy metal openers of the year.
It felt like a continous trip in mind-bending music that just didn’t seem to stop.
Heavy hitters like “Nightbound” and “Hamartia” floated between songs such as “Ultra Silvam.”
Somewhere along in the midst of all moshing, I realized that we needed some photos, and as I approached the stage, I saw that most of the faces on the stage were painted white, but when the colorful lights descended upon them they turned purple or green.
The intimate space and trust in public behavior could easily have enabled some people in the front row to kiss the lead guitarist Adam Zaar’s feet!
But this gig was not going down like that.
The ladies and gentlemen in the front and the back sometimes closed their eyes and inhaled the incense smoke, apparently transformed to another state of being. They were here for the music. Only.
When the deep pipe organ sound began pouring from the speakers along with the cellos during the encore, “Strange Gateways Beckon,” Oscar Leander’s heavy tom-toms hammered alongside Andersson’s bass and Andersson’s growl. It was as if one reached a catharsis—unique and likely never to be felt anywhere else like this again.
Now the time has come to reach out/We must heed their calls/When strange gateways beckon ….
Amen.
