Last Saturday, February the 22nd, Treurwilg released their new album, titled An End To Rumination. That same evening Treurwilg celebrated this with a release party in their hometown, Tilburg, in the Little Devil to be more precise. The bands that also were performing, aside Treurwilg, were Faal and Fading Bliss.
It was up to the Belgians from Fading Bliss to kick off this evening. They do so with a somewhat dreamy wall of sound that’s been created by Michel’s drums, that have a very deep sound, Arnaud’s bass and the guitars from Kaz and live-guitarist Stefan, who both regularly show two different guitar lines at the same time, something that adds more depth to their songs. Keyboardist Julburn also adds his subtle keyboards to that. That depth in Fading Bliss’ songs not only comes from those aforementioned different guitar lines, but also from the different vocals. In addition to the aforementioned five band members that are standing on the crowded, quite small stage of the Little Devil, there are also two vocalists, grunter/screamer Dahl and Mel, who brings high vocals, but at one moment also shows that she can scream very nice. During the instrumental parts in Fading Bliss’ music Mel and Dahl are hanging on their microphone-stands in a gloomy way, which perfectly fits this show. Apart from a little technical problem with Dahl’s microphone a very nice opening show.
The next band of the evening, Faal, starts ten to fifteen minutes later than scheduled. However, Faal makes up for that with their show very well. As frontman William Nijhof says at a given moment: “een lekkere pot teringherrie” (something like “a nice dose of noise”), and that’s exactly what Faal delivers. It’s heavy, it’s quite slow for its main part, but extremely overwhelming. That slow form of heaviness combined with the enormous load of reverberation that Faal consciously puts in their show, makes that this will probably get you in a sort of trance. A moshpit clearly isn’t something you expect at such a moment, but there still is a short and small moshpit, resulting in reactions from others in the audience as well as from frontman William Nijhof: “Er wordt godverdomme niet gepit op doom!” (“There will be no moshpit during a doom show goddamned!”). While Faal’s show gets you in trance by that combination of slow heaviness and much reverberation, these two aspects are also creating a huge power coming off of the stage. However, that power doesn’t only come from these two aspects, but also from the deep sound of Bart van Mierlo’s drums, for whom this show is his live debut with Faal, and from the ghastly vocals from frontman William Nijhof. The keyboards played by Cátia Uiterwijk Winkel-André Almeida, who also sings at some moments, are adding an extra, also very nice layer to this show.
Then it’s up to the headliner of tonight, Treurwilg, to enter the stage. The delay on the time schedule hasn’t changed and due to that Treurwilg also starts ten to fifteen minutes later than scheduled. Something that can be resulting in missing the end of Treurwilg’s show for people who are dependent on public transport to get home. I already knew that I was going to miss a little bit of the end of their show due to this, but due to the delay this became a bit more. The part of Treurwilg’s show that I did see was very convincing though. As mentioned before this night was the release party of An End To Rumination and because of that Treurwilg played this album in its entirety. The album already sounds very strong and live Treurwilg even adds some more strength to it. There truly is a lot power coming off of this show, that on one side has a very atmospheric vibe, but that at the same time also pounds very heavily. That atmospheric vibe is mainly coming from Stef Heesakkers’ guitar that has a bit higher sound compared to the guitar of frontman Rens van Herpt. Both guitars clearly have a very rich sound and exactly those two different guitar-sounds, as well as the fact that Stef and Rens are each regularly playing different guitar lines at the same moment, are what lifting this show to a higher level.
This was a very nice, doomy evening in a crowded Little Devil!
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Faal Official Website
Faal Facebook
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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.
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