09-11-2011 Shining

Supports: Dead Neanderthals; Venue: Doornroosje, Nijmegen (Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

The Norwegian band Shining went on tour to promote their new release “Live Blackjazz”.

Dead Neanderthals was the support for the evening. A Dutch duo that brings their music with a saxophone and drums. The music they make has its links with a what Shining does. Typical tracks by this band start of at one level and quickly move over to something with more rage, more tempo or more intensity as long as it is more. As soon as the climax is there, it’s all over. This sometimes results in short songs but give the band some space to show diversity. After all, their set was only 15 minutes . An interesting warm-up for Shining, but maybe a little too short to really get into them.

Shining started out as a jazz band in 1998 but evolved during the years to progressive metal. Blend it all with Black Metal and you have exactly what Shining is right now. Their self-defined genre ‘Blackjazz’ grew fast all over the world when the album carrying that name too got released. About almost two years later the band releases a live album and DVD. Of course they took the roads again and give the audience some idea of what to expect on this release. Shining has an interesting way of building their set. Every song is full of energy and rage, but they like to play around with it going from the fastest to a slower one straight back to the full intensity that they can give when bringing in the saxophone and switch that with guitars. Very important but maybe a bit of missing attention are they keyboards. Located on the side of the stage today it may have not been visible for everyone but the way of playing is entertaining as much as the rest of the band.
The audience can’t get enough of the band and demands an encore already before the band left the stage, simply because within an hour you quickly learn that this is a great band to see live, worth every cent of your ticket. For those who couldn’t be there, the DVD will show you this as well.