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Death walked the earth today

I never did end up making a pre-concert post this time around, as I usually do, but tonight I visited a concert for Insomnium. It was, as expected, totally unreal.

I have been listening to these guys since 2002, when their first CD came out. They’re now still touring for their third, which came out last fall, and which I don’t like particularly well. Unfortunately, their set tonight was pretty much all new material, playing almost every track off the new album, and very little else. Their set was so:

1. The Gale
2. Mortal Share
3. Drawn To Black
4. Change Of Heart
5. Bereavement
6. The Killjoy
7. The Day It All Came Down
8. Devoid Of Caring

Compare with the setlist I found online from their American tour this year (I had just arrived in Germany and so missed their U.S. dates). So all in all, the material they played simply wasn’t very good. But their performance was phenomenal. The vocals were much too quiet, but all the band members were spot-on in their playing.

Isn’t that an impressive picture? The evening was full of them, actually.

Unfortunately, the second band up, Swallow The Sun, played such a horribly boring set that I actually left in the middle of it, not evening sticking around for what was sure to be a class act by Amorphis. Yeah, Swallow The Sun were that bad.

I mean, maybe their material is selling better than Insomnium’s right now for some bizarre reason, but I just can’t understand how someone can organize a concert such that a melodic death metal band is followed by a doom metal band. Slowing the tempo down like that is the opposite of what metal concerts are about. Swallow The Sun would have been the perfect openers, as my bros and I could have knocked back a few beers, chilled, tapped our feet to their 50bpm tempo, so slow you can’t even headbang to it, and then smashed the bottles and crowdsurfed ourselves stupid while Insomnium played.

OK, I think I figured out why the organized it the way they did. But I still object.

And no, Insomnium did not play “Death Walked The Earth.” Unfortunate, yes, but they did play both “Bereavement” and “The Day It All Came Down” from that CD. Killer.

And because I can never end a post gracefully, take these two quotes.

From “Daughter Of The Moon“:

Slender the shape in night, unbearable the beauty
Shining in the silvery light, watching me with wistful eyes
Evanescent this vision, unattainable this illusion
But an image in my troubled dreams, hewn out of yearning and rue

From “Shades Of Deep Green“:

Neither the glittering dew on moors, nor the the whispering wind in dales
But only these shadows of green can remind me of her

\m/