It surely has been a long time since I listened to extreme metal (that term which encompasses death/doom/dark/thrash/black metal, describing an very agressive style of playing) and for that I decided to conduct a ‘memorial’ experience by going to see the romanian stop of the “Filthfest Tour” featuring Turisas and Moonspell and headlining Cradle of Filth (surely the ‘filth’ in filthfest must have given away Dani Filth).

Although, for all good reasons, Moonspell should have been headliners given that they are the more mature and musically inspired band of the two, that did not happen and in the end I was cringing at the sounds exhaled by a very dynamic but comically noisy screaming thing (Dani Filth aka ‘the little screaming thing’ or LST from now on).

In all honesty I was never able to, nor will I ever be able to warm up to any band whose lyrics are untintelligible and spends the time on stage screaming various things while pound some rather innocent instruments (we can’t all be Brian May but still).

That being said, I wanted to give a 10-mark to the technical team of the concert. Seriously, I never dreamed of seeing perfect light and near-perfect sounds in a concert here. Ever since I started going to concerts, the only concert I ever saw with near-perfect sound was the previous Nightwish in Debrecen concert (the “near perfect” instead of “perfect” was the fault of the playback recordings). Here it was “near” because somehow Moonspell managed to break the sound system, first on the high frequencies and then killing it on the low frequencies in a manner that required a short break to fix things.

I have a strong feeling that the bands have been touring with their own stage and equipment so no cheers for the local team (comprised only from security from what I could tell, even the merchandise was sold by some of a band’s staff, which one I don’t know). For some reason the concert started almost an hour after the mark, so there are some ‘booes’ for the organization still. No concert I have seen in this country ever started on the mark, the closest was the first Nightwish concert where the delay was an hour overall but half hour from that was due to a very restless public.

The first band to take the stage was a noisy and weird thing which, aside from doing the screaming thing (perhaps the vocalist was a very upset person in his own regard) also had no distinct melodic line. For I while I had fun mishearing “lyrics” (if any) but in the end I was quite happy that was over. Their mark: 3. Small suggestion: stop screaming and let some music in.

The little crowd that survived the first band grew much larger to welcome the finnish vikings from Turisas and a well-deserved welcome it was! Turisas plays a nicer and cleaner kind of viking metal, with more folk influences than any other. Nice and weird at the same time was a very extreme version of Boney-M’s “Rasputin” that also feature some great public interaction from the vocalist. That was great showmaship from them, great violin playing, a very very pleasant stage experience overall. To make it even better, Turisas is the only band with ‘heroic’ theme that actually made a sobre and really warrior-like presence on the stage, with very few gratuitous headbanging, an attitude which (for the most part) also inspired the crowd and for the second and third song they were saluting with hands in the air like a real army instead of aimless headbanging. Their performance was concluded with “Battle Metal”, a very fitting choice to end the performance. Their mark: 9 (some slips during the final song and a little headbanging from the bassist which really felt out of place in the context). Snall suggestion: Come back!!

Moonspell was next on the stage. The self entitled black-dark metal band from Portugal (dark metal? extreme metal that gets themes the horror mythos, with a very heavy and extreme sound, spiced up with gothic lyrics every now and then). They started out nicely, creating a vampiresque atmosphere bordering the horror style of Clive Barker (one of their declared inspirations) although I didn’t really warm up in the beginning, I was pleasantly surprised by “Scorpion Flower” (of their latest album) as well as “Luna” (a song which has been re-worked in three different albums … come on guys, that’s not a good sign) followed by the only two songs I knew and liked from before “Vampiria” and “Alma Mater”. The only thing I hold against Moonspell is their signature extreme drum riffs (translation: pound the drums hard and fast until the speakers or the drumsticks break) which are present on three quarters of their songs. That’s not very creative. In the end came “Full Moon Madness” which reminded me why I didn’t really like Moonspell in the past (though after Cradle took the stage, I was kindof regretting I didn’t listen more Moonspell and less Cradle in the past). Their mark: 8 (should be 7, but they kicked Cradle’s arse). Suggestion: give some weed to the drummer, send him away on a trip to discover creativity or something.

At this point, the crowd became just a little bigger than for the first band, obviously Moonspell was the big attraction (and for good reason). As Cradle came on to the stage along with their LST,  even more decided to leave, prompting Dani to shout “Are you fucking out there?” (my answer: no, whe’re not fucking out there, we’re just sitting). Their sounds tortured my ears deeply, though until the end I was hoping to hear some of their older and more creative songs like “Her Ghost in the Fog”, “From the cradle to enslave” or “A dream of wolves in the snow”. When finally “From the cradle …” was played in the end, my ears were screaming themselves ‘no more!’ and while the song sounded quite ok, it was too late to redeem anything and I was extremely happy when they left the stage. Their mark: 5 (should be 3, but +1 for “From the cradle …” and +1 for the monster on stage who, by all rights, should have been running away scared by Dani … but it must’ve been a very strong monster). Small suggestion: next time let Moonspell be headliners, they deserve it more.

In the end, it seems my opinion coincides with most of the crowd and the order of the concert should have been: <that nameless band>, Cradle, Turisas, Moonspell (the last two not necessarely in that order, I would’ve loved to go home with “Battle Metal” in my head, but “Alma Mater” would’ve been just as good). Overall, the concert was a very cool experience which would’ve been much better if Cradle wasn’t there.