26-02-2011 Stoneman

Venue: Metalvetia, Herisau (Switzerland)
By: Al Fiori (Bad Toro)

Another Saturday night at Metalvetia and this time it was for Stoneman a Swiss metal band with their Human Hater tour to rock the stage. Stoneman have been around since 2004 and apparently they have come a long way since then. Their official band headline reads “the No. 1 dark metal band of Switzerland” and again their blog stream boasts “[Stoneman] has entered the official Media Markt superstore charts”. With headliners such as these there was a lot to look forward to.

The venue gave Stoneman the opportunity to play an intimate gig with about 60 metalheads, at 22.45 the colourful stage lights gave way to a pitch black intro to the band and all in the audience seemed quite eager to see Stoneman perform live. What genre is Stoneman? Industrial goth metal? I’m not sure, industrial for sure with some touches of goth perhaps. The band had a great stage look, most significantly Iron Cris (bass) which made few ladies drool when he took off his top and showed his sculptured body. A little more disappointing was Mr.Fly (guitar) which very often gave his back to the audience and was in my opinion a little distracting and did not fit in well with the layout of the venue. How about Mikki Chixx (vocals)? His voice had a lot of growls but were no deep enough. In fairness, Mikki definitely has quite a dynamic range and great potential to take his voice to extremes. Going back to what genre Stoneman should be put into, I would say that they have a positive gothic influence, I could certainly pick up some vague similarities to Whiplasher of Deathstars but sadly Mikki failed to make a real lasting impact on me. I think this was due to the fact that Stoneman’s performance was too average and mediocre at so many different levels that although the listening experience was a decent one I do not think the band believes enough to be the No.1 metal band of Switzerland. Their live performance showed that they still have no real identity, their quality is good but they are not deep enough.

The atmosphere in the audience was quite static and there was not much participation. This was the first time I saw Stoneman performing live and with all the hype generated for this band my expectations were perhaps a tad too high. The band intentions were good I am sure, but they should have managed the audience expectations much better. Their live performance was clearly a lukewarm one and quite inconsistent to say the least, extreme at the bottom and top levels alike. I struggle with this, their delivery had not enough kick to keep my attention alive, playing a musical yo-yo, original enough to make you hope for something different but then failed and delivered just catchy melodies relying too much both on growling like in “Hope you all die soon” and on their stylish appearance than on content and depth. “Devil In A Gucci Dress” Stoneman’s latest addition to their repertoire is an absolute no no, and clearly too commercial, its lyrics too popular to be appreciated by real hardcore metal fans.
I have seen live shows of various metal bands from Switzerland and Stoneman makes me wonder whether perhaps they are just not ready for the underground scene. I have the feeling this band will take some time to grown on me and I would love to see them at an open air festival and observe if they can deliver a more energetic performance, entice and grab the audience to the fullest extent. At Metalvetia Stoneman missed a great opportunity, they did not even grant the audience an encore when prompted and to me this is a clear sign that something was definitely off.

More photo’s of this event can be found at Blastofashutter.com

Links:
Metalvetia Website
Stoneman Official