LIVE REVIEW: Orbit Culture Gaerea and Atlas
Keiran Heaffey reviews Orbit Culture, Gaerea and Atlas in London.
Photo credit: Jake Moore Photography
A great night in at the Electric Ballroom in London showcasing what bands across Europe have to offer with bands from Finland, Portugal and Sweden.
Starting off with Finnish act Atlas. A good opener for the night with the crowd already invested. The chuggy guitar tones at times sound real good with the contrast of slow instrumentals that build into a faster tempo which get the crowd headbanging often. The atmosphere on stage gives a mysterious vibe but the heavy use of the smoke machine sadly just makes it hard to see the band or photograph the band and our man Jake found out. Aside from this, the band at one point ask if we can top the noise levels of the Bristol crowd. Safe to say, we did.
Gaerea bring their Portuguese Black Metal to the table next. A far more interesting stage set up with a kind of blind on each side, covered in murals and changing colour now and again. A much brighter set does not bring a lighter genre of music of course as Gaerea are heavier than Atlas in sound and in lyrical content as well. Screaming throughout but there are mellow parts at times where the instrumentals give a real feeling of sorrow and pain along with time for thought which add to the lyrical content of existentialism that this band delivers. Shoutout to the drummer that just sounded flawless the whole way through. Whilst the band can sound a bit samey across the set, it is somewhat expected from that genre. Either way, the crowd were all in, and Orbit Culture may have a tough job of topping this set.
Headliners Orbit Culture aren’t even on stage yet but the crowd is going wild for them, chanting, screaming, and a man holding up a Sweden flag upon another man’s shoulders. This underground band are showing that whilst keeping to their routes, they are simply bigger than that now. The hour long merch queue proved this. Obit Culture unleash a 12 song set and the audience are lapping up every moment. Half of the set is in promotion of their latest album Death Above Life and it is safe to say their new material hits just as hard as their early work, if not harder. Opening with the beast of a title track, it sets the mood for the entire show; Orbit Culture are not here to fuck around. Every track got a louder reaction than the last including the closer song Vultures of North. I mentioned that they are well out of the Underground only scene and this show further pushed them into the mainstream world, if not in sound, but certainly in status.
Reviewed by: Keiran Heaffey