Eye Of Solitude’s last Liverpool gig was on January 31 2014, so it seemed sort of apt for them to return on January 30 2015 for another round, this time taking place at Bumper.
Openers Tor Marrock (7/10) got the night off to a decent start with their blend of death and black metal. Although it didn’t bring anything new to the table per se, it was an engaging performance from the four piece who really set things up well for the night ahead and something that worked really well with their style was that they did the heavy energetic sections really well, and then juxtaposed the softer sections fantastically against them. Definitely a band worth keeping an eye on.
My Silent Wake (8/10) really ramped up the volume in the venue as they projected a very meaty and chunky sound at the crowd and stormed through an absolutely phenomenal set. The band was just so tight and the music was very emotive, which added a great depth to the performance – indeed, there was a particularly powerful moment when their frontman dedicated a song to his father who had recently passed away. The sheer emotion in his performance for that song was breathtaking.
It’s always nice to come across a band with a bit of a My Dying Bride vibe to them, and not only did The Drowning (9/10) fall into this category, they also had a great sense of humour and to top it all off, they were Welsh! Their set was absolutely the highlight of the night because their music was impeccably played from start to finish and you could tell they just put their all into it. In addition, it was enjoyable to witness from a more humorous level too, thanks to frontman Matt joking with the crowd between songs – certainly a way to lighten the mood amongst all the gloominess!
The best way to describe a performance from Eye Of Solitude (8/10) is atmospheric. As was the case last time, they took to the stage with no lighting and performed in darkness, with just a row of candles in front of them. It gave everything an air of mystery which certainly went well with the music. and everything started off well with the whole room wasting no time by getting into the music and banging their heads along to it, with good element of the performance being the way their vocalist’s versatility and ability to switch effortlessly between deep aggressive vocals and a more sorrowful melodic style.
However, things hit a snag as they stumbled into some technical difficulties fairly early on in the performance and unfortunately it took a considerable amount of time to rectify. Despite this, everyone in the room remained patient whilst it was all fixed and eventually Eye Of Solitude got things moving again and the set progressed well from there – at one point we were even treated to the live premiere of some new material, so you definitely can’t complain at that!
Quite simply, it was an all-round great evening – same time next year, guys?
