Recently we posted a preview of what was going to be an atmospheric evening at the Melkweg in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. That evening, which was headlined by Cult of Luna, happened last Tuesday. As supports they brought Brutus and A.A. Williams.
Around 20 minutes after the venue opened its doors A.A. Williams, accompanied by a live drummer and a live bass player, entered the stage. Quite soon after that A.A. Williams succeeds in getting the audience quite silent with her calm and very impressive, mesmerizing music. The most impressive are her beautiful vocals that are full of emotion and are causing goosebumps. These vocals are supported by a heavily droning bass and tight drums, with the drums taking care of quite some variation in rhythm. The moments when their tracks get extra depth are mostly coming from those drums, just as from the electric guitar on which A.A. Williams plays very high notes in shoegazing style. In addition to her vocals A.A. Williams mainly plays on this electric guitar, with tonight’s first song in which she plays an acoustic guitar and a few moments later on in the show when she’s playing the keyboard as exceptions. In terms of movements on stage there’s not much to see, but in this case that’s a good thing, because otherwise it would probably only distract from the mesmerizing experience of A.A. Williams’ music. They create a perfect atmosphere this evening, something that gets extra strengthened by the very fitting lightshow during this show. The applause is very loud, A.A. Williams plays a very convincing show for sure.
The next band, Brutus, also plays very atmospheric music, but at the same time they also deliver a show that pounds much more than the preceding show. That’s especially due to the drums played by Stefanie. She also attracts most attention because of the huge amount of energy she shows. Drumming isn’t even the only thing she does though, she also is Brutus’ vocalist. During the beginning of this show she, besides drumming and singing, also seems to be quite busy with finding the exact location of the microphone. Later on in the show this fortunately becomes less troubling. Vocally Stefanie delivers calm, atmospheric vocals as well as raw shouts. Unfortunately those calm vocals aren’t always that well audible during the heavier parts of this show, while those raw shouts seem to be a bit in the background, but that seems to be a deliberate choice and gives a nice effect combined with the music. The person taking care of the lightshow apparently has a very good night, because during this show there also is a very fitting lightshow. The audience is applauding very loudly, but despite the regularly nice headbangable rhythm of Stefanie’s drums there are only a few people in the audience already going crazy for a bit.
A few moments before tonight’s headliner, Cult of Luna, enters the stage their special backdrop can already be seen. It’s the same special backdrop that Cult of Luna used during their show on this year’s edition of FortaRock. This backdrop in itself isn’t very special but, as I already saw during their show on FortaRock and as was the case during this show, it gives a very special effect due to the way it is placed in combination with the smoke and the, again, very nice and fitting lightshow. This perfectly fits Cult of Luna’s music that also is very lingering but pounds quite heavily at the same time. Especially Magnus Lindberg and Thomas Hedlund, Cult of Luna’s two drummers are standing out, they deliver a huge amount of power. Vocally Johannes Persson delivers very brutal grunts, while Fredrik Kihlberg delivers some more atmospheric-sounding clean vocals in some tracks. Together with the rest of Cult of Luna they take care of an almost constant wall of sound that makes you linger in an atmospheric vibe in a way that’s brutal and pounding. That may sound contradicting, but Cult of Luna exactly knows how to do this. This makes that a Cult of Luna show is a very intense experience that you have to experience yourself to fully understand it.
This was a very nicely mesmerizing evening for sure!
Here you can read our live review of FortaRock 2019’s first day where Cult of Luna also performed.
Cult of Luna Official Website
Cult of Luna Facebook
Cult of Luna Instagram
Cult of Luna Twitter
Brutus Official Website
Brutus Facebook
Brutus Instagram
Brutus Twitter
A.A. Williams Official Website
A.A. Williams Facebook
A.A. Williams Instagram
A.A. Williams 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.
