24-04-2010 The Chariot

Supports: The Eyes Of A Traitor, Iwrestledabearonce; Venue: Tivoli de Helling, Utrecht (Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

One evening of metalcore in Utrecht (The Netherlands)

When the first band started, quite early on the evening, it was kind of a disappointment to see only few people in the venue. The Eyes of A Traitor was the first band hitting the stage. It did not do much damage. The band often left long pauses between their songs and seemed a little distance. They did try to make a little show out of it by being very active on stage, but the attempt of this band to make up for it did not seem to succeed. The band might need to grow a little more, mainly in the guitar work, which was far behind on the other bands that have played this evening.

What a contrast did the next band make. This band is female fronted, meaning that there comes some diversity in it all. Their vocalist is making a big impression in being able to switch from a calm relaxed vocalstyle comparable to Björk towards the aggressive style that suits the typical Metalcore and this without giving the impression that it costs her any pain. It seems to come easy for her. Whether you prefer the sweeter version of her or the more aggressive one is in debate but there is another surprise to witness while seeing this band. Their guitarist, which hides in the background a bit, hardly gets attention with his stage act, being the calmest on stage suddenly steps forward to play a hell of a riffage there. A well done set with which they certainly won some souls to their fan base.

The Chariot was headlining this evening. Their stage act was infamous round town already, but what was to see here tonight did some people frown a bit. Their bassist made a quite drunk impression, being wild never walk in a straight line throwing his guitar around and sometimes having troubles to stay up straight. The vocalist puts his attention towards the bassist, rather facing him as if he was his nanny rather than observing the crowd. Reading this might bring you in the ideology that this was a sucky performance, but it surely had its charm. The audience enjoyed it big time and ended up being as crazy as the act on stage. Well, as long as these songs doesn’t get too fucked up it is all acceptable. And that is something that the band got together.