Bands: Amenra, Bait
Date: 12/05/19
Location: Feierwerk (HANSA39), Munich
Promoter: Feierwerk e.V.
Being part of an Amenra concert is something very unique and emotional. Only those who can fully engage in the band’s performances will be able to experience the dark beauty and the intense athmosphere in its entirety. Since I attended Amenra‘s last show in Munich a year before, I already knew what great things I could expect to happen on this evening as well. To cut the story short: despite the music being so overwhelmingly soulful and melancholic, I left the venue with a smile on my face.
Bait, a three-member band from Würzburg, had the honor to support Amenra on two dates of their tour. Honestly, I did not know the band at all before, but afterwards I did a little research what kind of music I can expect. I was quite interested how their blend of Black Metal and Hardcore would sound like. Here and there the band also merges some doomy and sludgy elements into their sound. All in all I really enjoyed their set and I definetly will have a closer look at how they will evolve on their upcoming releases. If you’re into some of the aforementioned genres, you should definetly check their record Sunburst (cool vinyl pressing by the way!).
During the break for setting up Amenra‘s equipment you could already feel the tension lingering in the air which reached its peak when the lights went down and the gloomy intro started. From the first notes of the powerful opener “The Pain It Is Shapeless” taken from their album Mass III, Amenra was showing how good they function as a well-established collective imprisoning the audience in their dark wall of sounds.
The following “Plus Pres De Toi” from their latest record Mass VI and the later following “Dearborn and Buried” (Mass V) perfectly reflected the emotional destructiveness on the one side paired with beautiful forays into gentle melancholia on the other. I was really impressed how intense Colin H. van Eeckhout‘s desperate vocals were and how he perfectly adapted to the different feelings transported within the song. Great! After a couple of more songs covering Amenra’s last four Mass opuses, the band finished its set with the overwhelming “Diaken”, which also marks the last song on their last record.
Again, this evening with Amenra has been a tremendous music experience for me which I highly recommend to everybody who is into any kind of dark and heavy music. Only a few bands manage to create this unique atmosphere with their music in connection with the monochrome stage lighting and the somber visual projections, a truly wonderful work of art. At this point, compliments to the responsible person at the mixing desk, who took care of the band’s really excellent and homogenous sound.
Last but not least – shout a huge THANK YOU to the nice people from Feierwerk who make this venue to such a comfortable place for listening to independent music!
Leave a Reply