08-09-2007 The End

Supports:  Fear Before the March of Flames, Heavy Heavy Low Low ; Venue: Waterfront
By: Wouter van de Kamp

This evening started out very early. With the doors opening at 7pm already and opening mathcore band Heavy Heavy Low Low. The venue was not even half filled and the band started quite late, but that wasn’t going to stop their enthusiasm. Or rather their aggressiveness. Total chaotic mathcore with odd breakdowns and grind like blastbeats. They seem to make a sport out of making it as odd as possible. And that just worked out quite right for me. Once you think you understand what they are doing they just change to something totally different. Either rhythmically or genre wise or any other possible way. Brilliant band. Perhaps they could improve on audience interaction, but on the other hand their sort of autistic performance just added to the oddity of it all.

 
 
    Although the next band could go under almost the same description their sound
  is quite different. More emo influences and more clean vocals and somewhat more
  structured songs. Clearly the crowd appreciated this more. But still they remain
  chaotic, weird and odd. Their beats from their sequencer didn’t disrupt the
  sound at all. And altogether this band seemed to suffer from identity crisis
  as well. But in a good way.

 
 
Finally it was time for what we had been waiting for. Or at least I had been waiting for. I know of no band having a more suitable name being a headliner than this band: The End. It is hard to categorise this band but mathcore/mathmetal comes closest. Similarities to other bands can be found in Opeth, Tool, Burst, In Flames and Mastodon. With jack-of-all-trades Aaron Wolf in their ranks this band treats Waterfront on a quite versatile performance. Besides that Aaron uses his throat in several ways going from screaming via clean vocals to a sort of singing talking and sometimes armed with megaphone, he also plays his personal floortom and a keyboard. Compared to the first two bands this band has more structure in their songs. They sound more poppy, but they don’t make chart music in any way. Polyrhythms and diversity are very applicable to this band. They are just less chaotic. The show itself was not as tight as the first two bands. But that didn’t seem to matter to the other attendants. And yes, the show was still cool. Just a bit less than I had hoped. Personally I think the band order could have been reversed. But that’s more a matter of taste I guess. Due to the very short sets of all three the bands we were already outside at 22.15. 
I understand that Waterfront wants to use the full capacity of their venue and therefore plans a different evening after a concert, but personally I’d prefer them not to… Or at least to do it later on in the evening. Nevertheless, I had a very good evening.

More pics of this gig can be found here

Links:

Heavy heavy low low Myspace
Fear Before the March of Flames Official
The End official