The death-gothic-doom metal still unites people, whatever their ages and styles. Still a majority of black shirts in the crowd, but we felt sympathy at any stage of the doors opening. The Madrid Route Resurrection evening could start. From the “darkest” Lisbon, in another genre I knew VOID some time ago… and I know that there are plenty of Death metal bands in Portugal but a very good Doom music band like Sinistro it was a long time since I’ve seen it live.
These “no-named” guys (Y, F, P, R) and their vocalist Patricia Andrade had success in a black and white atmosphere in front of ‘Roadburners’ last year… and this year, at BUT Madrid concert room, they were fully black: that night, people seemed to be shy (or busy!) to get on time to attend Sinistro to let their emotions exploded from inside, leaving those running through their body, the same way Patricia (the talented scenic vocal-artist from the band) did. There was so much passion into this light woman’s body which got more and more possessed while the drums got louder and darker. Her emotional voice marries perfectly with her way of living her feelings onstage… I felt such a gloomy but strong sensation with every song, but particularly with Relíquia and Corpo Presente from their last album Semente. Amazing performance! But don’t miss Sinistro’s upcoming 2018 “Bijou” (one of the new track btw…) Sangue Cassia.
Pallbearer which came after had bad luck getting a never-ending sound check…”more guitars”, “now, less”, unequal voice sound during the first songs… but these guys were extremely professional and motivated: they continuously asked the crowd (which finally came..) to express and live at full their long opuses. Joseph D. Rowland, the bass player was at ease in the middle part of the stage yelling at us, the amazing guitar-singer, Brett Campbell was coming at the edge of the stage…. his multiple effects pedals were hypnotic, his bad-ass screaming riffs and his strident vocal timbre were fitting so well.
I really liked Heartless track album (Thornes was really amazing), but my favorite they played came from their 2014 album Foundations of burden: a song called Worlds apart… great great moment from these Americans. That track from Pallbearer was perfect to introduce Paradise Lost and its new Medusa album. The band was so much wanted to be back playing Madrid stage! When you got to think that: after almost 30 years of playing doom-gothic metal and having influenced several bands such like Katatonia, you would have understood why such a massive crowd was there. Part of them, like I did, had probably seen them live for the first time 19+ years ago… and 15 albums later, Paradise Lost are still there to surprise us getting back to more doom this time.
The dark red and purple lights were blowing us to welcome such amazing musicians who still played “doom” and “gothic” metal with their heart… and who was thinking they did not, was not enough looking at an Aaron Aedy’s big smile when he was playing his awesome guitar.
I was completely moved together with the bass guitar playing by Steve Edmonson. Nick Holmes voice was aligned (and still alive!!) and several times he asked a fully emerged-crowd to participate… “I want to see your hands” and the fans did not hesitate “one second” to clap their hands and did it again and again… Big ovation from the crowd when “One second” song from the eponymous album started… and also for all Medusa’s album tracks they played, in particular “Fearless Sky”, “Gods of Ancient”, “The Longest Winter”, “Medusa” itself and when came “Blood & Chaos”: we all got crazy. I guess we found like a déjà-vu with that song. Guitars perfectly matched, bass and drums too, this was a very good way to have us holding our breath to the “not-very end”. The Encore moment reminded us more hope than it seemed with “No hope in sight, ” one of the big hits from The Plague within album, and the last “Say just words” song from “One second” album was all in all and the epic headbanging doom-gothic-metal dance.