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

The post Live review: Cult of Luna, Brutus and A.A. Williams at Melkweg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 26th, 2019 appeared first on DutchMetalManiac.

The evening will be opened by A.A. Williams. Her impressive self-titled debut album was released in January, with a reissue, that also adds a cover of Dolly Parton’s Jolene and the stripped down rehearsal recordings of three of the four songs, that was released in September. That debut album contains four songs that all sound very nice and are definitely giving goosebumps. They are quite calm, but with a doomy vibe, beautiful and dark at the same time. So, this is very special, impressive music that is perfect for an evening like this to immediately get in the right mood. Be sure to not miss this, because this will be very special.

After A.A. Williams’ set the evening will become quite a bit heavier, to start with the Belgian band Brutus. This band plays immersive, heavy, but at the same time atmospheric and even a bit proggy music while vocalist/drummer Stefanie sings beautiful clean vocals as well as some more aggressive sounding shouts. Brutus already showed this on their debut album, titled Burst, that was released two years ago and they continue that very nicely with Burst‘s successor Nest, which was released last March. I am very curious how this will sound when played live. This almost has to be very crushing.

Last June I saw tonight’s headliner, Cult of Luna, perform for the first time. That was at the FortaRock festival in Nijmegen, you can read my live review of it here. Cult of Luna’s show was a very intense and immersive experience, that was very nice, despite the few technical problems they had to endure during that show. Hopefully this show will be just as intense, just as immersive and just as nice as that show, but without the technical problems. The difference between Cult of Luna now and back then is that they released their new album, A Dawn to Fear, in September. On this album we’ll again hear very nice immersive parts with an atmospheric vibe, such as in its title track, but also very heavily pounding parts such as in The Silent Man and Nightwalkers. This is a show that has to be experienced, a show that needs you to let yourself go. That’s what Cult of Luna’s music is perfect for and my expectation is that that will be how it’s going to be this evening.

There’s no doubt that this evening will be a very special, beautiful evening with three very immersive shows!

Who will we see there? If you don’t have tickets yet, you can buy them here.

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

The post Preview: Cult of Luna, Brutus and A.A. Williams at Melkweg, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, November 26th, 2019 appeared first on DutchMetalManiac.