Cult of Luna / Rest / Atavist
The Star & Garter, Manchester 25/04/06
Hell, three gigs in a week! I'm starting to develop a Manc accent! I'll just say a big thanks to Lee and Marko for the driving to these gigs. Well a lot of things go in circles and here we are again at the Star and Garter, the scene of the earlier dose of horrors.
Opening tonight are Atavist, fresh from their gig at the Attic the previous night. Another good heavy menacing set seeing the two shorter tracks of their latest release being aired. They played well and went down well with a lot of the crowd appreciating their despondent heaviness. But I could not help thinking there where more at home with the more extreme doom audience of the Ufomammut gig.
Second on the bill are an Irish band called Rest who I had never heard of until tonight. They played a Pelican/Isis style of music in a tight and solid fashion. I enjoyed their set and they where a good band to have on with Cult of Luna, but, I thought they never really had anything new on offer to the blueprints the aforementioned have laid down. That said, the drummer was quite interesting, knocking out some nice beats and rhythm.
Finally Cult of Luna take to the stage without there full time vocalist Klas Rydberg, who is absent due to family commitments. They open the set with a couple of instrumental tracks that I think are off their latest CD. To me they sounded lighter than their previous instrumental offerings and this coupled with the new flowery design t-shirts had me losing faith a little. Fair enough Klas Rydberg not here and this is going to be different but, are these lads heading in a different direction... Well I’m glad to say all this was quickly forgotten when they erupted into classics off Salvation such as Leave Me Here and Echoes. The rest of the set was great, with the lack of the full time vocalist not really making a huge impact. The guitarist who handled vocal duties did so excellently and the music was the usual huge sound mixed with beautiful guitar work. Cool to see them in such a small venue and it was just as well the vocalist was not there; he probably would not have fit onto the stage!
Contributed by: Burnsey on the 20/05/06