with Portugal Towers, Firewind, and Divine Heresy May 12th 2008

Being a friend of AMR “employees” Cody, Nate, Cole, and Josh, I felt it was time I added something to the site other than ridiculous comments, homoerotic links or verbal attacks at Cody.  Cole, Nate and I went to see Dark Tranquility

(Tranquillity? Apparently it can be one L or two, depending on personal preference) at the Higher Ground Ballroom in South Burlington, Vermont last night, and I thought I would write up a review of the show.

We missed the local opener, Portugal Towers so I can’t comment on their performance — however we did catch Firewind and Divine Heresy.  Firewind is a power metal band from Greece, and although it’s not my cup of tea they are an incredibly talented band.  The lead vocalst, Apollo Papathanasio came out and belted about six or seven tunes, with dead on pitch and a lot of energy.  Gus G. shredded like crazy, pretty much what you’d expect from the guy.  What really impressed me most though was their rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Babis Katsionis.  This guy was shredding on guitar, holding down rhythm, and a few times playing solos on a synthesizer note for note with Gus G., ala Alexi and Janne from Children of Bodom.  I’m definitely not a fan of operatic vocals or power metal in general, but these guys are the real deal if you’re into that genre.

Next up was Divine Heresy.  Cole was fairly confident they would not be performing tonight after losing former Tommy “Vext” Cummings on lead vocals to band drama and irreconcilable differences.  He was replaced at the last minute with some guy named Jake Veredika, thus the show went on — much to our chagrin.  The show kicked off with a typical small-Vermont-gig circle pit, consisting of about five vertically challenged tough guys.  Slipknot tattoos and Chimera logos blurred in the whirlwind of black hoodies and pasty white flesh.  Tim Yeung, drumming for DH and touted as “2006’s fastest drummer” probably won the award for 2006’s sloppiest drummer as well.  Not an impressive performance at all, not to mention a horrible triggered bass drum sound that was clearly used on the albums, but definitely “tightened up” in production.  None of us were impressed, and the new “singer” Veredika hacked through about five or six songs, and did some awful singing, even worse than Cummings used to.  Overall I was glad when DH was done – they’re one of those flare-up acts that will peak and quickly fall, and most likely be forgotten.  Dino Cazares will find another half-assed project to move on to, hopefully something like jogging or biking.  I think after all these years of going to shows to see bands like Dark Tranquility, I’m tired of these “tough guy” opening acts who have to put on this false bad-ass image.  Just play your music, nobody wants to fight you.

On to the good stuff.  Dark Tranquility came out to the opening of one of their newer songs from the album Fiction, “Terminus”.  “Terminus” has a cool synth intro, so it works well as an opener.  I was honestly not expecting a great sounding Dark Tranquility.  I had never seen them before, and the venue at Higher Ground (it was in the smaller stage area) was small, with a weak PA system, and not a great turnout, being that it was Monday night.

Boy was I wrong.

Mikael Stanne growled perfectly, and sang even better.  Many times when you see bands that use growling vocals it’s a bit of a letdown when you see what is real and what is done in the studio.  Not the case with Stanne, he was one hundred percent from the first song to the last.  It was as if he was just lip-syncing to the vocal tracks from their CD’s.  He was the highlight of the show, and has an awesome  stage presence, even in such a lame venue as the Higher Ground walk-in closet.  The rest of the band sounded awesome, although Niklas Sundin’s guitar was consistently louder than Martin Henriksson’s.  Towards the end of the show it got better, I think the sound guys finally woke up and noticed the keyboards and rhythm guitars were barely audible.  Although this particular room is not known for its great sound (as I’m told by Colman) DT made the most of it for sure.

One of the highlights for me was “Inside the Particle Storm”, admittedly a song I don’t always listen to on the album, but sounded incredible live.  DT did a long set, and sounded great through and through.  Newer songs such as “The New Build”, “Icipher”, “Misery’s Crown”, and “My Negation” are just incredible live.  I’d love to see these songs in a bigger hall, with a more powerful sound system — the only advantage being we were three feet from Stanne’s bugged out eyes and huge growls.  No gates or security guards.  He put his all into a performance for about 70 people, he is a true professional; very humble and thankful for the crowd’s enthusiasm, which surprisingly grew as the gig wound down.  The final song was “The New Build”, the first song off of Character — which opens with a cool drum fill and goes straight to a blazing fast blast-beat provided by Anders Jivarp, who did an excellent job as well.  No triggers here, just straight up metal drumming.   All in all the three of us were quite sure we had gotten our fifteen dollars worth.  What a way to spend a Monday night.  If you have a chance to catch DT on this tour, definitely go out of your way for it, you will not be disappointed.

Review by: Carter