Due to running late I sadly missed the first few minutes of Finnish opener' Omnium Gatherum set.  At once inside the first impression made it seem as if vocalist Jukka Pelkonen was just constantly growling over a wall of sound. This may have been due a lack of familiarity with their material and as the set progressed I found myself enjoying them more and more, with the vocals coming across clearer and the songs becoming more distinguishable from each other. Including the likes of “Undertaker”, “Spiritual” and “Black Seas Cry” it was the newer material that really caught the ear and they certainly appeared to go down well with the Birmingham audience, which was no surprise given that, sound wise, they weren't too dissimilar to headliners, Dark Tranquillity. 

With HRH’s album of the year results being released and with Dark Tranquillity’s latest album, Fiction, sitting very nicely at the top of this reviewers list, it was with much anticipation that we waited for the band to hit the stage and finally deliver a full headline tour in support of the album.  They started their set with “Terminus”, with it’s keyboard led intro playing as they came on stage, building slowly until all of the members of the band were visible and then the erupted as the full power of the song kicked in.  This ideal song to start the set with and, once it was over vocalist, Mikael Stanne, asked if they could play another new track, to a resounding ‘fuck yeah’ from the crowd. Thus “The Lesser Faith”  was served up before the band moved onto older material including “The Wonders At Your Feet” and “Lost To Apathy”. 

Whilst the Barfly was not completely sold out, there was certainly a healthy crowd in attendance and a lot of passionate fans that appeared to want to get as close to the stage as possible and even some friendly heckling as elements claimed that Dark Tranquillity were twice the band of compatriots In Flames which, considering In Flame's own Anders Friden was the original Dark Tranquillity frontman brought  a few laughs. Of course the band were always going to include a good portion of the material from Fiction and hence “Inside The Particle Storm” and particularly “Focus Shift”, turned the crowd into a sea of nodding heads and then “Misery’s Crown”, alongside “Therein”, demonstrated that Stanne has a pretty damn good voice to go along with his usual rough vocals. 

With the band eschewing the normal encore routine the band instead played straight through their allotted hour and a half set and, by the end both band and audience appeared extremely satisfied with the night's work. With the sort of response Dark Tranquillity elicited in Birmingham why they aren't playing to bigger audiences, I don't know.

Return To Gig Reviews Main Menu