DARKSEED, MIDNATTSOL, ATARGATIS

With a lot of snow, heavy wind and the resulting 30 – 50 miles per hour on the freeway we reached Aalen/Germany after about 3 hours car driving.
8 pm: Doors open. But: Did nobody want to see the triology of dark metal? Hm…

The location, a comfortable gothic pub which is full with about 300 people, is called “Rock it”. But that pub, will it be rocked tonight? We don´t know it yet…
Atargatis from Regensburg/Germany around female Darkwell singer Stephanie had the task to warmen up the guys and girls on 10:30 pm with their dark metal. However, nobody dared to show their tributes to them. But Atargatis did a good job. A bit of death, black and thrash metal the clean vocals had a fight with the rough men voice. Even if nobody came to the front of the stage, there has been applause.

Saturday evening, 10:15 pm and still no much more metalheads… weird… And that, although the Norwegian-German band Midnattsol celebrated their first live gig ever! Also Midnattsol had their problems to get the people in front of the stage with their nordic folk metal. Singer Carmen is covered with the shadow of her big sister Liv Kristine (Leaves´ Eyes/Atrocity), but that is okay, when you see that this was her first live concert as a singer ever. But I have to say that I was not much into them…

Darkseed, the gothic metal band from Munich, on stage with the new line-up, had not much more luck. The intro for „Disbeliever“ was ignored by the people in the pub. Also the song didn´t bring the people up from their seats. But why? The song was not the problem – because that is an absolute killer! „Disbeliever“ off the new album „Ultimate Darkness“ for the start, there couldn´t have been a better song! But the rarely seeded audience didn´t want to come out of themselves… Even song No. 1 sounded a bit shaking, „Ultimate Darkness“, song No. 2 on the setlist, killed! The band in their elements! Singer Stefan Hertrich stood with his grand coldness like an ice mountain on stage and brought the mainly new songs with an aggressive voice to the point. „Biting cold“ – on the one hand outside (icy streets and heavy snow fall), on the other hand inside (the audience)…

Darkseed played great with „Save me“ and now you could see some dudes shaking their feet. A total live killer!!! But still nobody in front of the stage. 2 meters of ground said „welcome“ 🙁 This was not fair for Darkseed! We definitely give that to the very bad weather that the location was not full! Because Darkseed rocked the house!! And they did that with „Fly into the night“ off the album called „Astral Adventures“, too. Afterwards a real killer song with: „The dark one“, yes… Mr. Hertrich definitely represented him. Super! But his bandmates (Maurizio Guolo on drums, Tom Gilcher and Tommy Herrmann on guitars, as well as bassist Martin Motnik and keyboardist Armin Dörfler) had a great party on stage. Guys, cool stage acting! „The fall“, which is the soundtrack for the same titled computer game, just let us came down a little bit. And then Stefan announced the killer song of the evening: „My burden“! Background voice Martin worked amazingly together with lead singer Stefan, but sometimes a bit too loud. Aggressively, the vocals came out of the loudspeakers!! „Follow me“ helped the people to come out of theirselves. But anyway, nobody wanted to come a bit closer. So the ground in front of the stage still was a virgin. Nevertheless you could see the guys and girls in the audience banging their heads a bit more. It seemed that the coldness did a good job: Little people and those who were there = totally frozen… What a pity…

The first Darkseed concert after a few years not being on stage. You shouldn´t have missed that, because the boys are still here!! With the best album ever! Your own fault who missed THAT!! „Follow me“ and „Speak silence“ were again the purest killers, but especially the last mentioned song… For being the big end, the pure gothic piece „Sleep sleep sweetheart“ was played. There was a creep over my whole back! Pure creep!!! And FINALLY the people banged their heads! With „Forever Darkness“ (you can find that song on the album called „Diving into darkness“) the show should have its grande finale. As Darkseed were thanking for the evening and leaving the stage, you could surprisingly hear „We want more“-calls. Even the band didn´t count on that with that little people in the house! So „I deny you“ (also on „Diving into darkness“) was the final light! Also very surprising: This song is much better than on CD!

This show was definitely very fine (okay… sometimes the guitars were too quiet) – eben though the location was not full!! Imagine, it would have been like that… Then this had been a real cool comeback for Darkseed!! As I said: YOUR OWN FAULT, WHO MISSED THAT!!
Go ahead, guys!!!

www.atargatis.de
www.midnattsol.com
www.darkseed.com

Time Schedule :
Get In: DARKSEED 16:30
Load In: Backline 17:00
Soundcheck: DARKSEED 17:45 till 18:30
Dinner: 18:30
Soundcheck: Supports 19:00 till 19:55
Doors Latest: 20:00
Showtime: ATARGATIS 20:30 till 21:10
Showtime: MIDNATTSOL 21:30 till 22:10
Showtime: DARKSEED 22:30
Curfew: 02:00

Line-Up:
Stefan Hertrich – Vocals and electronics
Maurizio Guolo – drums
Tom Gilcher – guitars
Thomas Herrmann – guitars
Martin Motnik – bass
Armin Dörfler – keyboards

Setlist:
Disbeliever
Ultimate Darkness
Biting Cold
Save me
Fly into the night
The dark one
The fall
I deny you
My burden
Follow me
Endless night
Speak silence
Sleep, sleep silence
Forever darkness

Photos taken during the show check at Metal Centre's LIVE Gallery.