Neurosis (& Amenra) - Matching their Roadburn performance?
With Neurosis’ performance in April at the infamous Roadburn Festival in Tilburg still fresh in mind, the band returns for another set of festival dates including a few venue-shows, like this one at Patronaat in Haarlem. With Belgian sludgers Amenra as support-act (who performed at Roadburn festival as well, by the way), we had a good evening ahead of us.
Well what’s left to say about Belgium’s Amenra? This is the third time in my short Metalrage career and about the sixth time that I’ve seen them live. Yet, they always seem to impress me. Opening with ‘Silver Needle Golden Pain’ the atmosphere was pretty much set. Besides that you can expect the usual goodness; singer with his back to the audience (even though he turned his head around twice, whoa! First time for me!), spacey visuals and some proper hardcore sludge for the next 40 minutes or so. Nothing special for me because it’s the same show as always, but Amenra still proved to be a good band and especially as a support act for a band like Neurosis.
At Roadburn Festival in April we had a discussion about Neurosis about the fact that the first time you witness them live it’s such an amazing experience, but the times you see them after they fail to impress you just as much as they do the first time. I thought everyone was chatting rubbish (maybe it was because I was still completely in trance about the show I just witnessed), but tonight I must say I have to agree. It must be said that Neurosis is an oiled machine though and with a setlist including tracks like ‘Locust Star’, ‘Given To The Rising’, A Season In The Sky’ and ending your set with ‘Through Silver In Blood´ (after much request after the Roadburn show), you can’t go completely wrong. The sound started off a little sloppy but it got better during the show. Luckily for my ears the volume was loud but not as loud as the previous show. But, trying to make the show more intense or so, Neurosis wanted the air conditioning to be turned off during their whole show (which lasted about an hour and a half) so during the set the degrees in the venue started to rise until it started to get rather annoying than intense. Shame, because a band like this doesn’t need that at all and it made it harder for me to get into the music actually. Even though the music was tight, the atmosphere was way too hot and that made it a way less epic show than the one at Roadburn for me. I’m sure people who’ve seen Neurosis for the first time will think different about that and my advice is, if you haven’t seen them yet: go! If you have, think twice!