Do you organize a festival? Are you tired of having attendees only coming to the venue to see the main acts? Have you tried putting one of them playing first at 4pm? That’s how you get the wheels rolling. To kick off Amplifest’s fourth edition, doom metal trio YOB brought along some bulldozer called Clearing the Path to Ascend, the sonic equivalent of a descent to some slowly burning inner Earth dimension that you can’t escape from. It sounds like there’s no way up and your day can’t get any worse after being subject to such an heavy atmosphere, but then you enter the next room and find Peter Brötzmann and Steve Noble unleashing copious amounts of insanity with their sax and drums. There’s no real melody allowing you to dance, there’s no rhythm to headbang to, still you need to find some way of letting go all the energy you’re hoarding.
Then you get to see Marissa Nadler.
Now this is my only complaint about this years’ Amplifest. I’m all for variety – this is, by far, my favorite lineup from the 4 editions – but after those two concerts, all we needed was to break some stuff. And we got a lacklustre show from an artist that can absolutely do better. Maybe her kind of performance didn’t fit the general environment of the festival at all, maybe it was just anticlimactic at the time, but Nadler’s show lacked a sparkle, despite some truly beautiful moments (1923, Firecrackers, Drive, Fifty Five Falls). Pallbearer’s gig sounded like some sort of reprise of the concert YOB presented us a couple of hours ago, packing the now scorching hot, smaller room of the Hard Club complex.
Swans. I’m sorry, I loved the 2011 concert at Casa da Música, I enjoyed parts of the concert in Guimarães the following year, but I simply can’t stand your present incarnation. This could be a case of “it’s not you, it’s me”, but I think I’m not the only one who finds your louder-crisper-without-any-sense-of-melody-and-more-repetitive-than-thou current bullshit just plain boring. We all love you, Michael Gira, but Swans are pretty much dead. Moving on.
Hexis and Pharmakon didn’t sound nearly as interesting as the Amplitalk “Some Girls are Bigger than Others”, about the role of women in the music industry, which we all know is a world dominated mainly by bearded guys working shitty jobs to make ends meet while promoting shows, running labels or putting festivals together, which was just one of the things discussed while attending the brilliant talk “Dark City, Dead Promoter” the next day. Please keep up with those talks next year, they’re just as interesting and important as the concerts.
Ben Frost was the highlight of the first day of festival and by high lights I’m not talking about those strobe lights. Presenting his new album, A U R O R A, Frost constructed and de-constructed techno in real time as he made his compositions barely danceable just to break them up and start all over again. Just as the flame was starting to die out, Swans’ Thor Harris joined Frost on drums and took the show to an upper stage. Brilliant.
So you thought headbanging was a tough thing to do at 4pm. What about 3:30? Black Shape of Nexus opened the second day with a shitting of doom that was so much better (and way less generic!) when the vocals kicked in. Black metal wasn’t exactly what I desired to listen to at 4:30pm, so that early afternoon was dedicated to Mono’s new album listening session. Aaaaaand it sounds exactly the same as their latest records, so yes, it’s still good. Too bad Urfaust had to cancel due to family issues though: their drummer + members of Sektor 304 – who ended up being the mystery band on Saturday – jammed on their time slot but it wasn’t the same thing. Fortunately we had Wovenhand next.
David Eugene Edwards only brought a guitar player, a bass player and a drummer for this tour – a smaller entourage than the last time we saw him, back when Wovenhand released The Threshingfloor. That was enough to emulate the denser, more “metallic” sound of their latest record, Refractory Obdurate. Like a fast and heavy train rolling through a plain. The heaviest band in the festival, and they’re not even a metal band. Edwards’ preaches, moaned into his distortion-heavy (yes, I’m using a lot of words that invoke some kind of “heaviness”) mic sounded
as apocalyptic as ever, suiting the festival’s overall ambiance. On the encore, after a main gig almost completely comprised of songs from the last two albums (and a cover of 16 Horsepower’s “Horse Head Fiddle”), came a magnific solo rendition of Mosaic’s stellar “Whistling Girl” and one of the highlights of their entire discography, the tribal-sounding “Kicking Bird” (off Ten Stones). By far, the best concert the Hard Club had witnessed on this weekend. (By the way, what was that song that was playing before the encore? I wanted to stomp the ground so hard.)
The weird Wolvserpent (bands with Wolf in their names!) were up next on the smaller room, but the talk we mentioned earlier was much more interesting and provided some rest before the big meal of the night that was Cult of Luna. Aaaaaand prepare for disappointment. Unlike a lot of fans, I didn’t find the gig unpleasant nor boring, but we all know they can do better. Despite playing two massive tracks from Somewhere Along the Highway (“Finland” and “Dark City, Dead Man”), CoL’s first and only show of the year since August seriously lacked spirit and vitality – they sounded exactly like that almost famous, lacking recent glory football player that returns to his country of origin in his 30s just to spend a well deserved vacation. We could discuss the necessity for a second drummer and the third guitar, but I felt that wasn’t the issue here – something else was missing. And what’s the deal with Vertikal’s “Passing Through”? I hereby present that song as “that six minute timeframe when you can leave where you are and go pick up a beer” – or a cider, if you’re as dull as that song or just slightly hangover. The keyboard doesn’t add a lot too – please keep it simple and stop messing around, guys. I liked you better when we were all seven years younger.
All in all, even if you’re not that much into extreme music – and this years’ edition appealed way more to people who aren’t, which is great since we’re all getting older – Amplifest is the definitive music experience in the Iberian peninsula. A top notch venue, stellar sound quality in all concerts, amazing hand-picked lineup, a bunch of extra-concert activities, a respectful, informed audience and a fantastic city to explore. Now do your homework and imagine where we’ll be again next October.
DSS
