Hosted in 'Sandbacka Brewery''s premises this very new Club offered a cozy atmosphere, more like a private party with a really nice bar than an actually club. That's always nice, the feel of hanging out with friends, having a drink and listen to good music is always awesome. When the party has some live music it gets even better. Also, the home brewed beer tasted really nice especially the Ale and the Stout but if the rest of the evening should be remembered one do good in avoiding too much of the Stout as it held over 12% alcohol.

It's quite hard to label this ASTRAL CARNEVAL, they're balancing on that edge of the razor blade between styles and labels such widely as NU, more towards MACHINE HEAD than KORN or AVENGED SEVENFOLD though, perhaps a little Gothenburg Death Metal and a whole lot Old-school Thrash.

They sure as hell did their best to squeeze all 5 members up on the tiny stage. A place which is sold out with 80 guests can't fit a very big stage but I do think it could have been another foot or two more out on the floor, then ASTRAL CARNEVAL might have had a chance to actually play on it.
But a band's got to do what a band's got to do to get the show going so guitar player Kenneth Nielsen and bass player Andreas Moren jumped off stage and claimed their space out on the floor instead. Of course, that took a lot of space from the crowd instead but the advantage with the move was that the headbanging passed on to the quite sleepy crowd and the longer the concert went the bigger the crowd of headbangers grew. The move worked, absolutely and the crowd was all warmed up for the main act of the evening.

New local heroes MALICIOUM headlined this concert premiere and it's so nice that there are decent bands in the area again. They served raw old-school thrash with a slight more brutal feel than most bands around today.

With only one guitar player (Tompa Berg) the music tend to appear primitive and nothing could have been better in this yet rough venue. Ok, MALICIOUM has some work to do still to knock people off their feet. It might be the nature of the venue that drew everything down though because both musically and performance wise MALICIOUM are really good but it never really clicked for me this night.
Ok, it's not easy to do anything at all at Bryggeriet's tiny stage. Unless you do what ASTRAL CARNEVAL did and simply join the audience on the floor in front of the stage. That would have been quite hard for MALICIOUM because the floor was quite crowded at this point and waving around instruments, spiked bracelets and stud-belts would have been lethal for the audience. The fact that they've only been around for a year and a half or so and with a demo Cursed Ground as the sole evidence make this performance quite impressive because this beat at least half of the bands in the genre. Just imagine what will happen when MALICIOUM gets a chance to play real stages, the ones that actually allow movement.

Both bands had really good qualities, ASTRAL CARNEVAL were super-tight and the trick with jumping off stage absolutely made them a lot of fun to watch. But my heart is stuck in old-school so it was MALICIOUM that made the strongest impression on me. Can't wait to hear more from them!

(photos by astral Erika)

ASTRAL CARNEVAL

MALICIOUM