Demilich and Deathbound in Kuopio, Finland

Demilich and Deathbound
July 22, 2006
Henry’s Pub, Kuopio, Finland

Every band is eventually confronted with the time when it is the best to quit as the objective has already been achieved, and continuing wouldn’t bring anything new or fresh to the world, while the remaining memory is being diluted by surplus effort. It is then better to focus to create the keenest edge and to refine the artistic monolith as impressive as possible, so that the world itself could be protruded in, like a monolith ascends towards the vast skies and its heights.

The venue, Henry’s Pub in Kuopio, Finland, was a rather homely and roomy enough little pub, which had space for both the more restrained members of the crowd as well as those who take music enthusiastically and physically: those who gather in front of the stage. The bar was obviously directed to older people before, as aged exceptions stood out here and there among the mostly dark clothed people. Some people wandered in amidst the bar, stopping to wonder at their surroundings without a clear aim, and slipped away as seemingly absent-minded as they were at their arrival; like zombies who return to the places familiar to them from memories of their previous life, but have no clue where to go, being just parts of mechanical formulae. The mood was calm, and speakers tinted the atmosphere filled with the quiet churn of wait with some metal, which however didn’t attract attention and ended up lilting in the background, filling the corners. Senses woke up when Deathbound climbed to the stage for soundcheck at about 10 PM, and after a while of noodling there, they launched their own furious set, which was meant to warm up the crowd for the main performer of the evening, Demilich.

Deathbound

Deathbound, whose members hail from here and there from Finland, presented a hefty serving of grindcore by their raw bursts of sound. Songs were concise and angry, and were intent upon blindly charging onto emptiness, which doesn’t really bow to social norms but rather, indiscriminately appears where it wishes to. After breaching this boundary they didn’t go further, however, but assured their position in a way and didn’t venture ahead, or show their theme from several different angles, giving clarity to the whole; the word “No” radiated from the flood of sound generated by the instruments at a steady pace. The last song, “I God”, was a potent manifesto, the last nail and confirmation; the end of one frenzied assault and the beginning of another journey, to which this band decently warmed up the audience.

Demilich

It didn’t take too long until Demilich stepped on the stage, and briskly started their set with the song “When the Sun Drank the Weight of the Water”, which possessed the crowd with the very first notes. The performance of the bassist Corpse (of Deathchain) was the most visual of the lot, while others remained mostly professionally calm. Song after song, in the order of the album “Nespithe” and a few other works thrown in, they executed with apparent joy and skill, presumably satisfied with the decision to bury Demilich at the top. The audience was understandably thankful of this act, and when the combination of three guitars, a bass, drums and the subterranean growling of Mr. Boman, all of them laced with passion and love for their craft, brought these works painted with precision and creative brush before the minds of people, they fully relished it: the tunes of the world’s mechanics were absorbed in moshing heads, and bewitched some to trance-like dancing, as well.

The music of Demilich: The drummer crafted abstract patterns, which were in their honesty the actual essence and structure of the monolith, in all its immensity and incomprehensibility; the rumbling bass gave it form, a surface existing similarly to a waving dream, which stretched the boundaries of reason as the eyes of our minds focused greedily on this apparition. Guitars cast the ultimate alluring texture and revealed the various strings of the fabric with their plunges and static swarms and quiverings of movement, as Boman’s voice of faceless depths dragged minds ever closer to Nothingness, into the crystal chambers of the World’s soul by every verse born, emerging from matter.

Mighty were their performances, and your reviewer was grateful for being able to witness a most excellent farewell concert, and as the streams of “Raped Embalmed Beauty Sleep” lapsed into space and coalesced with the atmosphere, clock 00:09 AM it was over: Demilich was no more. Although energy isn’t channeled to this celestial body anymore, in memories it will continue on the course which it was honed to travel. It is better this way than if it had been forcibly hanged on, as it is now a monolith of its own in the orbit, proud and brilliant among its kind, many of which are being grinded on until they are but a formless clump of confused dreams, set adrift on wastelands littered with the wind-beaten husks of similar failures, with oblivion and extinction as their fate.

Bands:
Demilich
Deathbound

Promoters:
Henry’s Pub, Kuopio

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