Tuesday 5 February 2008

Dark Tranquility


Last Sunday night (3rd February 2008) we spent some cash to get into the Liverpool Barfly and took in a bit of melodic death metal in the form of Sweden's Dark Tranquility. They are currently on tour in the UK promoting their new album "Fiction", support from Finnish band Omnium Gathering, who I'd never heard of before (and it's difficult finding much info about them online). The night before we'd been to a crust punk gig in Bradford (see below) and then suddenly we're at a Scandinavian metal concert. The only connection is that both bands use guitars.




Dark Tranquility's set was something of a whistle-stop tour of their "greatest hits", performed in front of a surprisingly healthy-sized Liverpool crowd. Are there really that many D.T. fans in the north west of England? From the amount of audience participation that accompanied each song I can only guess that the answer is a resounding 'yes'. The band played hard and their Scouse fans joined in. It was quite a mixed crowd too, as is usually the case on Merseyside - young metallers and old enjoying seeing a band on their own doorstep, a (nowadays) rare Liverpool leg of a UK metal tour.

Starting the set with "Terminus" (track 3 on their latest album "Fiction", fact fans), Dark Tranquility showed class and belted out song after song, fitting in 16 or 17 tunes in an hour and a half. Singer Mikael Stanne (previously of Hammerfall) spent a lot of the set down on the blocks next to the crash barrier at the very foot of the stage, shaking hands with the masses in front of him. He also managed to stand on the house photographers a few times too (that's what you get for flashing lights in his face for over an hour eh!). Bassman Martin Henriksson also kept the cameramen busy with fits of dreadlocked headbanging. It seemed as though the band ran through the set quickly with only a short break towards the end before an encore ("Lethe" and "The New Build") and that was that.

Setlist:

Termimus, The Lesser Faith, The Treason Wall, The Wonders At Your Feet, Lost To Apathy, Hedon, Inside The Paticle Storm, The Endless Feed, Focus Shift, Misery's Crown, Punish My Heaven, Therin, Blind At Heart, My Negation, Final Resistance, Lethe, The New Build.

Check out Dark Tranquility if you are a fan of the musical stylings of bands like At The Gates, Arch Enemy and In Flames.

We're really hitting the gigs at the moment, 2 more at the end of this week and then Maiden the week after that.

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