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SOILWORK
The Underworld, Camden,London 29 February 2004
You know I think that there really is something stirring in London.
There are definitely more youngsters going to gigs these days and
that is Very Good News.
The crowd at Dragonforce was at least 50% late teens/early 20s and it
was the same on this occasion for Soilwork. As I was interviewing
Nightwish, I didn't manage to catch the other bands, but I certainly
got a sense that the atmosphere had been just as intense during The
Forsaken's set at the very least. The Underworld was packed (it must
have been sold out) and down in the `pit' area in front of the stage,
it was very hot and sweaty indeed.
There were two backcloths at the back of the stage and the drum stool
was occupied by Dirk Verbeuren (drummer with French band's Scarve and
Headline). Wearing headphones (I guess so that he could play to a
click track or something) he really impressed, as did the rest of
the band - and in particular Speed on vocals. In fact all the members
of the band appeared to be in a great mood and certainly seemed to be
motivated to play even better, by the fantastic reaction they got
from the crowd.
The set began with an aggressive `Figure Number Five' and another
track from the same album. After that they mixed things up very well,
with the odd, older, faster thrashier tracks placed in amongst the
more recent material. Personally I found that the material from
Natural Born Chaos came off the best - but perhaps that has something
to do with me being more familiar with that album.
Vocalist Speed was wearing a shirt and tie and looked like an American Police officer or
security guard. He kept saying "You guys are fucking amazing"
and `Hell Yeah' (the band have obviously been spending too long in
the States). However, he was correct because the crowd were amazing
making this one of the liveliest gigs I've attended in some time. One
of the two guitarists was sporting a T-shirt from `The Darkness', but
everyone on stage was having fun and they moved around as well as
could be expected given the fairly cramped conditions on stage.
The main set came to a crushing end with `Black Star Deceiver', which
a portion of the crowd had been screaming for and though they left
the stage briefly, they returned to play a further 2 songs `Bastard
Chain' and `Distortion Sleep', neither of which I recognized. They
must certainly feel that they have an audience here who loves them
(Speed commented just how well the crowd knew the lyrics of the
songs) and so lets hope that next time, they can headline somewhere
bigger and perhaps play outside of the capital again. If you like
aggressive yet tuneful Death Metal, then do not miss them next time
around.
Setlist (incomplete):
Figure Number Five, The Flameout, Like the Average Stalker, As We
Speak, Rejection Role, Overload, Light The Torch, Sadistic Lullaby,
Millionflame, Black Star Deceiver
Encores: Bastard Chain, Distortion Sleep
Review: Charlie Farrell
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