The Gates of Halloween was a concert event featuring several domestic bands, arranged on the eve of All Saints' Day on 30 October 2005 at the moscow Relax club.
This report will have a fairly simple structure: I will recount the performing bands in sequence. It must be said, though, that at 5 in the evening — the official start time — there were perhaps 30 people in the club at most, and by the end of the first band's (FRAGILE ART's) set their numbers had not increased significantly. Even so, the band performed more than well. This time I liked them considerably more than when I had seen them at the HIERONYMUS BOSCH album presentation a little over a month before. The band had changed their bassist — specifically, the female bassist was replaced by a male one. Everything else remained the same, but perhaps I was in a more receptive mood for melodic death that day — which is indeed the most accurate definition of their style, it should be said. True melodic death in the fullest sense of the phrase, not power metal with harsh vocals that has been given the name Finnish melodic death — here everything is in the traditions of the Swedish school. The band performed superbly; the vocalist deserves full credit — his growling is excellent. The set was not very long, and TILARIS almost immediately took the stage.
Here everything was quite magnificent. I will not conceal the fact that I am a great non-admirer of metal music "made in russia", but TILARIS are a band I cannot find fault with under any circumstances — aside from simply liking their music very much, one cannot objectively fail to note that the band is quite original, and it is extremely difficult to say in whose tradition they play. On the one hand — doom, quite heavy but not raw in sound, rather pleasant to listen to, with a great many guitar solos; all of this is complemented by the vocalist's growling and the keyboardist's folk elements. The band performed a number of original compositions and concluded their set with a FINNTROLL cover. Five stars — that is all I can say.
What followed, however, was dismal. I observed INSIDE YOU for the second time, and my impression had changed — for the worse; possibly because in the interim I had managed to listen to their album as well. My view is this: attempting at this point in time to play something in the vein of early CREMATORY (first two albums) and similarly early-era MOONSPELL is pointless — you cannot surpass those pillars of the genre; the band is doomed from the outset to be derivative. And the entire reason is that too much is being copied, and I personally heard nothing original or distinctively their own — perhaps I wasn't listening closely enough; I express my personal impression. But while TILARIS drew virtually everyone who had gathered in the club by that point (around 80 people in the hall), during INSIDE YOU — especially toward the end of their set — a good half of the audience was sitting in the bar. A contingent of younger audience members in the hall organised frenzied dancing, and most of those present were watching them rather than the stage.
The next band was the reason many people had come that day — FORGIVE ME NOT — there is really nothing more to say here. The band almost always performs very well, playing fairly technical yet simultaneously very accessible metal which personally strongly reminds me of SENTENCED and several similar bands. Many people call them the leaders of russian love-metal — I would not insult the band in that way, since that genre generally implies music built on a single riff, primitively simple and ostentatiously pretentious, and neither of those qualities is remotely applicable to this band. During their set there were probably close to 200 people in the hall.
Then everyone gradually drifted toward the bar — not quite immediately, but already after NEO GUIDE's first song — since there was, in general, nothing of any particular substance to watch (/this is my personal view, but judging by the number of people in the hall, I am clearly not alone in it/).
Finally, around a hundred people stayed for the last performance of the day — the moscow band FOREST STREAM. In recent times the band, which previously played in the style of early-1990s death-doom metal, had moved somewhat toward black metal, but this day featured a special setlist composed of the band's slowest and most sorrowful songs. It was a fairy tale of a set; I derived enormous pleasure from it. Toward the end, feeling rather tired from the day, I had already begun preparing to leave — but at that moment the vocalist announced that there would be a surprise for all fans of MY DYING BRIDE. Since I unquestionably count myself among that number, I could not leave. A brilliantly performed cover concluded the evening, lifting the spirits of almost everyone present.
What can I say overall? Two bands made a negative impression, two a generally neutral one, while TILARIS and FOREST STREAM were simply a genuine gift on the day.
Special thanks to Mendor for the accreditation provided.