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Imagine you have a favorite band and have wanted to see them live for years, but every time it’s almost time, something comes up: sometimes you’re sick, sometimes you’re already busy on the dates, and then there’s a pandemic! And now, you finally have the opportunity to see them live! If you can relate to this a little, then you know how we felt about KATATONIA. Finally, and I mean FINALLY, we were able to experience them live, and you can read about what it was like and what we thought of the support bands EVERGREY and KLOGR in the review below!
As always, thanks to the extremely talented lightinmirror.de, who managed to capture everything out of the fog and darkness!
Klogr
Concerts are always a good opportunity to get to know bands you haven’t heard of before! That’s how it was for us with KLOGR. We hadn’t come across this alternative metal band before, so we were very excited about their performance. Songs like Bleeding, White Eyes, and The Wall of Illusion were also very cool, but somehow the mood didn’t really take off… At least at the front, the sound was really bad and you could hardly understand anything, so I see this as one of the main reasons for the atmosphere needing improvement.
At least during the last song, there was more energy from the audience again!
Evergrey
EVERGREY, however, were much better! The band had obviously spent so much money on fog and LED walls that there was no budget left for front lighting, but that didn’t stop Tom S. Englund’s Progressive Metal band from playing a really good set. Although the sound wasn’t what we would have liked, it was somewhat compensated for by a good show. The set consisted mainly of the band’s already well-known single releases and was a successful prelude to the upcoming KATATONIA set.
Especially during the last songs, Falling from the Sun and OXYGEN!, you could feel the energy and anticipation in the audience.
If you’re thinking, “I like Tom’s voice, but isn’t there something more lighthearted?” then I recommend his second project, SILENT SKIES! Their latest album, Dormant, is particularly worth listening to!
Katatonia
The undisputed highlight of the evening, however, was KATATONIA. The band led by singer and songwriter Jonas Renkse took to the stage in an unexcited manner and opened their set with Thrice, the first song from their current album Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State. Here, too, there was very little light from the front, but instead a fascinating show on various LED monitors.
The set was a truly excellent mix of all the band’s important albums, featuring newer songs such as Wind of No Change, Austerity, and In the Event of…, but also older songs such as July, For My Demons, and Forsaker. You could tell how much each band member believed in the music and how much feeling they put into playing every single note, every single beat, and every single chord. The band also seemed very harmonious and perfectly in tune with each other. By the second song, Soil’s Song, KATATONIA had the full attention of the audience at Leipzig’s Täubchenthal. The mix of quiet and harder passages that many of the songs featured was an expression of performative balance, which the fans gratefully accepted. There was no shortage of headbanging, on the contrary!
It became particularly emotional for me during Old Heart Falls. That was the song that introduced me to KATATONIA back then, and finally hearing it live was simply an indescribably beautiful moment for me! The dark, gloomy mood mixed with the dramatic, enchanted lyrics triggered so many profound feelings in me that I can’t even describe exactly what was going on. The fact is, we drove home from Leipzig that evening feeling more than inspired, and it was definitely not the last time we saw the talented Swedes from KATATONIA live!
Shieldmaiden's Voice 