Doornroosje – Nijmegen
November 14th, 2024

Report by: Ingrid
Photos by: Lotte

This Thursday evening brought us to familiar places, with familiar faces. We went down to one of our favourite venues in The Netherlands, Doornroosje in Nijmegen. We love coming here, because the venue is built to deliver good sound quality, the crew is always friendly, prices are reasonable and it’s only one minute walking from the central station; a perfect recipe for being a well-loved venue, and having a good evening.

The combination of bands on tour this evening, is a bit of an odd one for me. Beside the fact that all bands recently released a new album, they don’t have thát much in common music wise, and all three represent a different genre. But that doesn’t have to matter that much, when all bands play a hell of a show like today.
It was still pretty early in the evening when Hamferð started playing, yours truly had to rush from work to be on time as well, and the crowd was thin still. This really is a shame because oh-my what a performance by these Faroese men! From the first tune to the last the band didn’t disappoint. Real dark and heavy sounds were delivered; or as we heard someone in the crowd say: ‘I feel it in my intestines’. Even though it’s not fair to judge a band by just its singer, the combination of these heavy tunes with Jón Aldará his piercing voice creates magic, and I was glad that the live performance today sounded as magical as the band sounds on album. They mainly played songs from their newest release ‘Men Guðs hond er sterk’, but of course classic ‘Evst’ couldn’t be missed either, a worthy opener of the evening!

Already during Hamferð, more people gathered inside, and it the venue felt less empty. Nevertheless, it didn’t fill up this evening, and there were lesser people than I expected there would be. Next band, Oranssi Pazuzu, probably had the largest crowd of the evening, or at least, so it felt. This was somewhat surprising, since the Fins were the ‘odd one’ on the billing. Where Hamferð and Sólstafir both have a darker and ‘slower’ sound, Oranssi Pazuzu couldn’t be more of the opposite with their psychedelic up-tempo sound. They started off with ‘Bioalkemisti’ from the just released album ‘Muuntautuja’ and the ‘organized chaos’ started, only to end almost an hour later. The new album dominated their performance, and it was noticeable that there wasn’t much experience yet in playing some of the songs live. Not in a negative way though, it didn’t take down anything of their energetic show. At least the crowd couldn’t stop moving, and their well build up performance was a lot better than the last time I saw them, two years ago in the same venue.

Headliner of the evening are the Icelandic men from Sólstafir. A few days before the start of the tour (today was only the second show) they released their new full length ‘Hin Helga Kvöl’, and how better to promote an album, then go on tour immediately. When the band started playing, the venue seemed emptier than during Oranssi Pazuzu. It’s hard to put a finger on it, but it felt like the band had to struggle to get their energy unto the crowd. It’s a shame because their performance was one of the best I’ve seen so far, but yet I also didn’t really ‘feel it’ myself either this evening. It’s a weird sensation seeing singer Aðalbjörn Tryggvason interact with audience, making jokes in between songs, enjoying himself on stage, posing with his guitar, and being in good voice (although you either love or hate it; or as I heard next to me: ‘he always sings as if he just stepped on a Lego’), but getting so little response. During the show, the audience became a bit more responsive, especially the front rows, when we were treated with hits as ‘Svartir sandar’, ‘Fjara’ and ‘Ótta’. Personally, I really enjoyed the live performance of ‘Blakkrakki’, which was besides title song ‘Hin Helga Kvöl’ and ‘Hún Andar’ one of the songs of the new release that were played live. The band played a solid one and a half hour, during which the venue seemed to empty even more, but I was glad, and the other enthusiasts left, were glad that they came back to play the classic ‘Goddess of Ages’ as an encore.

All in all, it was quite an interesting evening. All bands played top notch performances, but the evening lacked energy from the audience. I think it already would have might quite a difference if they would have played in the smaller stage of Doornroosje. Also, maybe this combination of bands might not be the best one.