06-03-2011 40 Watt Sun

Supports: Semlah, Mirror of Deception; Venue: Baroeg, Rotterdam (Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Three Doom bands united by their label, Cyclone Empire, got on tour and made their way to Rotterdam. 40 Watt Sun was headlining.

Semlah is the first band of the evening. They are coming from Sweden and have released their debut full length “Semlah” in 2009. The band seem to bring in some vocals that hit the commercial side, as if they are meant to widen the fan base, but it seem to take some time before they could get the audience along with their ideas.Most eye catching is the bands bassist who seem to be quite active while their vocalist seems confused sometimes about his whereabouts. At the end of their set they only partly convinced the audience, mainly due the fact that the whole set seems a bit messy here and there. Could have been better.

Mirror of Deception played a stronger set. The band has its origin in Germany and has been playing since the 90’s. Last year the band have released their album “A Smouldering Fire” and this was their fourth full length.The band seem to take slight influences from different genres perhaps some folk or heavy metal is what you find back in it. The band had to do without a bassist due to circumstances and this may exactly be why the performance did not really took off. Not too much was going on at the stage which changed dramatically when they brought in a guest to join on bass. The last couple of songs where therefore more interesting to observe and made their performance stand out a little more. The audience seem to appreciate it as well, but an encore wasn’t planned for this night.

Headlining was the band 40 Watt Sun. After Warning had called its quits the music life of Patrick Walker and Christian Leitch did not stop. They continued with making music and formed 40 Watt Sun when bassist William Sprong joined these two men. Just before the tour started the band released their long awaited debut album “The Inside Room” which clearly got some people wondering how this formation will bring this live.The show is quite static, the music doesn’t leave much of an opportunity to do different, but yet very intense. The guitars were quite upfront in the sound which left the audience with a strong, driving element to hold on to. Of course the songs of the album aren’t really known yet and some of the people in the venue kept asking for “Footprints” a song of their previous band. The band managed to get the audience to stick with them, and even though some rather long breaks between the songs the band gave the audience some extra in the encore what they loudly asked for after the Brits left the stage.