On Sunday November the 17th the Swiss folk metallers of Eluveitie performed at TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht. As supports they brought the Italians of Lacuna Coil and the Moldavians of Infected Rain.
It’s up to Infected Rain to kick off this evening. That’s something they do in a very powerful way. The basics of Infected Rain’s music, Eugene’s pounding drums in collaboration with Vladimir’s bass, combined with Sergey’s, who’s back after having to skip some of Infected Rain’s earlier shows, and Vidick’s tight riffs are taking care for a neckbreaking, very grooving vibe with a lot of energy coming off of it. On top of that frontwoman Lena adds very powerful screams which she interchanges with her beautiful, very authentic, clean vocals, including a nice, a bit echoing effect. The only thing that’s a bit less well about this is that those clean vocals drown a bit in the mix at some moments, especially during the song Infected Rain starts with, Mold. On stage the energy that comes off of Infected Rain’s music can especially be seen when looking at Lena and Vidick. Unfortunately it can be much less seen within the audience. Some people in the audience are banging their heads, but most of the people are just calmly looking at the stage. During Infected Rain’s last song, Sweet, Sweet Lies, there is a circle pit going on, but that happens because Lena asks for it. During this last song she gives everything she has for the last time tonight while she hangs over the audience in the first row. Maybe the audience reacting not very energetic also has something to do with the quite pounding aspect of Infected Rain and the fact that this is the first show of the evening, because the enthusiasm seems to grow during the show and the applause at the end of their set is quite enthusiastic.
That enthusiasm grows even more during the next two shows, with Lacuna Coil entering the stage first. I am going to be honest, Lacuna Coil really isn’t a band I like and after I saw them live last year as support of Epica at 013 in Tilburg, that certainly didn’t get better. In my opinion I wouldn’t be disappointed when the special guest Lacuna Coil was skipped. However, they are on stage at this moment and many people in the audience clearly are very happy with that, something that I also noticed during that earlier show at 013. I am present here to write a live review of this evening and that’s why I am also going to watch Lacuna Coil’s show, despite my negative view on this band and maybe to be in for a surprise. I have to say that my negative view became a bit less negative after this show, Lacuna Coil never will be my favorite band, but this show was much stronger than I expected. Personally the musically deeper songs Layers of Time, the first song in which Andrea Ferro also brings some more vocals, The House of Shame, Sword of Anger and Veneficium, in which Cristina Scabbia delivers very high vocals, really surprised me. The depth of the songs also is why Lacuna Coil’s music isn’t really to my liking. In my opinion the other songs they played tonight lack that depth the above-mentioned songs have. Rhythm-section Richard Meiz (drums) and Marco Coti Zelati (bass) are grooving heavily, but in terms of rhythm-changes they do so in a bit boring way. Guitarist Diego “Didi” Cavalotti shows some nice solos, but the rest of what he’s doing on guitar isn’t that special. Vocalist Cristina Scabbia is best in shape tonight, with her a bit emotionless vocals during Heaven’s a Lie as exception to that. During this song there also seems to be some problems with the mix, because the bass suddenly is very loud. Vocalist Andrea Ferro is also quite in shape with his vocals, while these aren’t that well audible all the time, because he holds his microphone quite far from his mouth. The atmosphere during this show is very nice and Cristina as well as Andrea are encouraging this even more.
That nice atmosphere will stay that way for some time tonight, because Eluveitie also unleashes this within the audience. They perfectly start their show very strong so that this show can’t go wrong anymore. They do so with Ategnatos, of which the ritualistic-sounding intro gets a very nice execution with two drums being played behind a white curtain with lights behind them, resulting in big shadows on the curtain to lead up to going completely crazy with the rest of this song. There immediately is a lot of energy to be found on the, due to Eluveitie’s nine band members, busy stage, just as within the audience. Matteo Sisti’s whistles, and at some moments bagpipes, Nicole Anspenger’s fiddle, Fabienne Erni’s harp, Michaline Malisz’ hurdygurdy and at some moments Chrigel Glanzmann’s mandolin add a very nice folky vibe to Eluveitie’s music just as quite a lot of depth and variation. That’s something drummer Alain Ackermann, bass player Kay Brem and guitarists Jonas Wolf and Rafael Salzmann also do in terms of their rhythm-changes. In addition to that they also regularly deliver very heavily pounding moments on which heads can be banged, such as in Worship, Kingdome Come Undone and Rebirth. Of course Eluveitie classics such as The Call of the Mountains, which tonight is performed in its Swiss version, De Ruef vo de Bärge, and Inis Mona, on which the audience can jump along for the last time because Eluveitie closes their set with this song tonight, aren’t missing on their setlist. Not only Eluveitie’s instrumentalists are very well in shape tonight, that also is the case with both vocalists, the already as instrumentalists mentioned Chrigel Glanzmann and Fabienne Erni. Chrigel also does a few songs alone vocal-wise, while Fabienne is completely alone on stage during Artio. In addition to her beautiful vocals Fabienne also shows a very intense scream at a few moments. Eluveitie plays a very strong show tonight and they definitely showed that they totally deserved to be tonight’s headliner.
This evening was a very nice evening, with Eluveitie’s show being the strongest with Infected Rain’s show soon following, while Lacuna Coil also surprised me a bit positively.
Here you can read the interview DutchMetalManiac’s Tim van Velthuysen had with Infected Rain’s Lena Scissorhands before this show. You can also read our 15th part of Promoting Bands, which includes Infected Rain, here. You can also read our live review of the first day of this year’s Dynamo Metalfest, where Eluveitie played, here. Here you can read our review of Eluveitie’s live album Live at Masters of Rock. Here you can read our review of Lacuna Coil’s live album The 119 Show – Live In London, while you can read our review of their Delirium album here.
Eluveitie Official Website
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Lacuna Coil Official Website
Lacuna Coil Facebook
Lacuna Coil Instagram
Lacuna Coil Twitter
Infected Rain Official Website
Infected Rain Facebook
Infected Rain Instagram
Infected Rain Twitter
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
[…] at TivoliVredenburg in Utrecht, The Netherlands. You can read our live review of that show here. Before the show DutchMetalManiac’s Tim van Velthuysen sat down with Infected Rain’s […]
[…] read our live review of Dynamo Metalfest 2019’s first day, where Eluveitie also performed. Here you can read our other live review of Eluveitie, when they performed at TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht […]