Let’s get this out of the way immediately: Katatonia is one of my favourite bands, and since I moved to Berlin a few years ago I’ve kept an eye on their touring schedule to finally see them live (or rather, hear them, who cares about they look). Admittedly, they were here last year already, if I remember correctly, but that was with their “unplugged” or all-acoustic set, which I decided to avoid simply because… Well, it’s obvious why. Not that I dislike their digression from distortion (in fact, their acoustic live album Sanctitude, recorded at Union Chapel in London, is a real treat and I’ve listened to it many times), but I nevertheless decided to wait for a “thoroughly plugged” set, simply because I like it when the fillings threaten to fall out of my teeth as the band blasts away, and I love a good bassy punch in the gut. So sue me.
A couple of days ago I finally caught Katatonia on their “Fallen Hearts of Europe” tour.
At this point I’d usually start grumbling about things that got on my nerves, but this manifestation was simply too good to complain about (much). First of all, the concert was in Huxleys Neue Welt, which is my favourite concert hall in Berlin by far. First of all, it’s walking distance from my flat… Secondly, it’s exactly the right size and boasts a very handy bar… And most importantly, I have yet to hear any sound blunders in this hall. I’ve witnessed shitty sound all over Berlin, sometimes so much so that it ruined my evening completely, but to date Huxleys has been excluded from my list of grudges. So there it is: finally a concert that I don’t have any complaints about – I mean, sound-wise. And hell yeah, it was loud! Good! Great! Because sometimes I suspect rock ‘n’ roll is going down the drain simply because rock (and even metal) concerts have suddenly become too damn quiet. Health concerns in the vein of the smoking ban? (Speaking of which, for the first time ever the bastards didn’t let us vape in there, we got reprimanded despite of tons of the same shit being pumped in the air onstage already during the opening acts, VOLA and Agent Fresco, so we had to hide in the crowd where we blew vapour at the floor in the company of other clandestine vapers. I felt like a goddamn teenager again.) Or am I slowly growing deaf as the gap between my birth date and the present time is getting increasingly abysmal? I have no idea, but seeing a heap of people standing around with earplugs and goddamn cotton in their ears made me… Well, grumble a bit. I mean, why the hell do you go to a metal concert at all, then, if it’s too loud for you? OK, I get it that the waiters resort to earplugs: they have to be there on a daily basis whether they like the bands or not. But the audience?! I mean, really!?
But I digress…
And so it began:
The only thing that had me slightly worried at the beginning was that the singer’s voice was noticeably tired, maybe because they apparently played at the Epic Metal Festival in the Netherlands the day before (and who knows what was happening there, right?). However, the guy (Jonas Renkse) warmed up thoroughly after a couple of tracks and that was that. Apart from that infinitesimal hiccup that only grumblin’ ole musicians noticed at all, probably, everything else was flawless. Another thing that made me all warm and fuzzy inside was the light design – well thought-out and tempo-synced (yep, Katatonia are slaves to the metronome, no way around that if you use pre-recorded synths in the absence of an “analogue” keyboardist, loops, and tempo-based guitar effects) – which contributed significantly to the dramaturgy of the tracks. Kudos to whomever did that. I enjoy superb old-skool light design much more than (more often than not pretty lame) videos running in the background, which bands like so much to abuse these days. (Mayhaps to steer the attention away from their grim visages? Who knows.) As expected, both guitarists singing perfect backing vocals really put the “H” in the goosebump-inducing harmonies because of which I can’t get enough of this band… And last but not least, I loved Daniel Moilanen, the new drummer, and appreciated the fact that he looks like a physics professor and as such represents a heartwarming counterpoint to the rest of the long-haired Vikings. I mean, the guy can play (so can the others, of course).
And so it went on:
Speaking of long-haired Vikings – the only thing that got on my nerves in the second half of the concert was this two-point-ten-metre bloke with a huge hairdo who decided to stand and headbang right in front of me all of a sudden, interrupting my reverie… But even him I no longer registered as the band concluded the concert with one of my favourite tracks:
Anyway, to date this was the best concert I’ve been to this year. We’ll see if it stays on top of my list, though, because Opeth are dropping by at the end of November.
