Edinburgh may be Scotland’s capital city, but for many years now it has been standing in the shadow of Glasgow when it comes to the live music scene and especially to the amount of touring bands visiting Scotland. It basically doesn’t happen very often that bigger touring bands play in Edinburgh. So when it was announced that the two Relapse Records ‘powerhouses’ Inter Arma and Windhand were going to play in Edinburgh and that this was going to be their only Scottish date on their current UK tour then this was a lot of reason to get excited about and local Edinburgh promoter Ewen of Pisschrist Promotions basically had his scoop of the year there.
Ewen’s own band Atragon kicked off tonight’s proceedings with a great set of slow heavy doom. Regardless of the fact that this 4-piece plays a lot of gigs in Edinburgh and surroundings, this was the first time I saw them since their second guitar player Victor left the band to fully focus on his sludge metal band DUNE. Based on the set they played tonight I can only say that this was a wise move as it benefits both DUNE and Atragon. Ewen’s bass sounds louder and a lot beefier and Ruaridh’s sole guitar playing fits the type of slow doom perfectly well. They played 4 songs, ‘Wallowing Wizard’, ‘The Sound in the Halls’, ‘And the Matriarch did Bleed’ and ‘I, Necromancer’, and I was pleased to hear plans are being made for the recording of their first full-length release, which no doubt will be a slab of the finest heavy doom!
By the time Inter Arma got on stage, Bannermans was getting pretty full, which was great to see especially since it was a Monday night. I suppose that’s what the label ‘Scottish exclusive’ does to a show. Last year Inter Arma released one of my favourite albums of 2013 and the sound on Sky Burial is a bit hard to describe as they are true metal genre benders, going from black metal to doom to more progressive metal passages. Seeing them live was high on my wish list though, so I was getting pretty excited when the band was getting ready on stage while what looked like discussing either the set they were going to play or how a certain song was going. The moment they started it appeared to be the latter as they opened the gates to hell with a new track, which can only be described as ‘blackened fury’. With some high speed drumming and amazing guitar shredding combined with Mike Paparo’s impressive growling whilst throwing scary, psychopathic looks into the crowd we were off on a very impressive start. I absolutely love it when bands show some guts and start their set with a new tune! Bassist Joe Kerkes told me later that this track hasn’t been recorded yet and I have no idea what it’s called (guys, why not call it ‘Blackened Fury’??), but it gives me huge anticipation to the upcoming release, which should hopefully be released later this year.
The rest of Inter Arma’s set included songs of their previous releases, which were the slower heavy riffing doom track ‘Epicenter’, taken of their first full-length release Sundown and ‘sblood’ and ‘Destroyer’ both of their latest release Sky Burial. All band members were pretty brilliant, but special credit does to drummer T.J. Childers, who played phenomenally well, especially during ‘God's blood’ (or 'sblood), a track that is built on the repetitive drum pattern and bass riff. They ended on the 10 minutes long ‘Destroyer’, one of the more interesting tracks on Sky Burial, which works a lot better live than I had anticipated.
The headliners were Windhand, similarly to Inter Arma from Richmond, Virginia, and it was pretty clear that the majority of the crowd were here to see the masters of ‘modern’ doom metal. I like Windhand. Their last release Soma is a doom masterclass, and their split Reflection of the Negative with Cough is a fantastic release. I haven’t listened to their first self-titled release yet, but no doubt this will be a great listen as well. Some people criticise Windhand for being too much like Electric Wizard and similar sounding doom bands, but in my opinion there is nothing wrong with this. Aren’t all current doom bands not influenced or at least inspired by Electric Wizard, Sleep or even the mighty Black Sabbath these days? If you provide the loudness and the riffs, slowly putting you in a trance-like state, then it’s pretty much what I’m after when I go and see a heavy doom band. And this is exactly what Windhand does. And they not only play heavy doom, they also incorporate a lot of heavy metal in their music, which adds a nice change at just the right times within their songs.
Their set consisted of songs taken of all their releases, with personal highlights ‘Winter Sun’ of the self-titled album, ‘Amaranth’ of Reflection of the Negative and ‘Orchard’ of Soma. The sign of a good doom gig is when the band played for nearly an hour and it only feels like they played 5 minutes, and the Windhand gig was no exception to this. I don’t think the band anticipated the crowd demanding an encore as singer Dorthia Cottrell had made her way off stage towards the back of the room already, but we got an encore ending this brilliant night on a massive high note.
It was pretty special to see a packed Bannermans on a Monday night, demonstrating nicely that it can be done in Edinburgh!
Special mention goes to Ross McKendrick who designed the awesome poster. Check out RDM Visuals for more of his brilliant work!
