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Morrigan's Pit has closed down as of November 2006. The site and its articles will stay online as an archive until September at least, but probably longer.
The Archives
2002-2006
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PROGPOWER 2004
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Sjiwa - Baarlo (NL)
October 1st-3rd 2004
http://www.progpower.com
The 6th ProgPower edition was again one of a multinational, friendly audience and a cool selection of (more or less) progressive bands in a small, friendly town in the south of the Netherlands, Baarlo. Daniel wrote one of his great, brutally honest reviews again and I combined his observations with my own for Morrigan's Pit. On Friday there was a pre-party in the basement with Day Six playing.(Marlies)
A good critique is written with a number of things in mind: First, nothing is objectively good or bad. Second, nothing can ever be duly critiqued without knowing the creator's intentions. I would like to point out that all this is and must be subjective; if I don't like a band, that doesn't mean you won't like it. To go into my likes and dislikes would be beyond the scope of this article; I hope I will be able to communicate what I do and what I do not like in the subtext. (Daniel)
FRIDAY
DAY SIX is a Dutch band who recently won the Metal Bash, the Netherlands' most important new comer metal competition. I can see why, and I can see how they're still newcomers at the same time. The frontman, singer, and guitarist, Robbie, still betrays the band´s punk roots: he has the energy of a punk band's frontman, and some of the odd quirks in his facial expressions and jumps on stage were surely reminiscent of a punk band as well. It helped to convey a certain sense of the artist enjoying his own music though, and that's always good. The music that Day Six played was nothing 
extraordinary. It was certainly prog, it certainly had some symphonic influences here and there, there were some nice things going on with the bass (Teddy from Loch Vostock in the audience seemed particularly interested and amazed by a two finger tapping technique), but overall the band felt rather average. They played two sets, both opened by the same song. There was one cover song, "Painted Black" from The Rolling Stones. I liked the fact that Day Six took it and made it their own, but that's all the good stuff I had to say about the cover. They mixed all the verses together liberally. Never mind the fact that the lyrics suddenly made no more sense. It's only English, who will notice? I will. Generally, I would say that Day Six could do with a dedicated singer; it's not that the guitarist's singing was bad, but it wasn't terribly good either. In a band where pretty much every instrumentalist is at least way above average (this goes without saying in a serious progband), average singing just doesn't cut it. Maybe a dedicated singer would bring some more impulses to the vocal lines as well, which were, you guessed it, average. (Daniel)
SATURDAY
The Dutch band THE DUST CONNECTION was surely not bad, but they were certainly not very good either. I dislike high-pitched singing generally, but I especially dislike it when there's no contrast provided by a good, powerful normal to low range. Many prog singers these days seem to think it's cool to just do some clean, high screams, and that's that. The singing merely annoyed me. The band otherwise was average, maybe slightly below average. There was little to no crowd reaction from my point of view (I stood in the first row, practically throughout the whole festival. There's a spot in the venue with imprints that exactly fit my shoes). Ironically, the singer thanked us "for the great connection", which was even more ironic since it was apparent as a memorized "cool line". That aside, I don't remember very much. I know that Marlies liked it better and said she thought this band from Tilburg were promising. (Daniel)
ALL TOO HUMAN is an American band from Texas. There was the high-pitched singer once more, but at least this one was handsome and had a huge fucking silver pentagram-shaped star on his belt. The music was heavier than Dust Connection, with a stronger dash of rock, especially in the solos. There was a whole lot of feeling in the music as well. This band was the first proof of the festival the crowd support is earned, not requested. Especially at a festival like ProgPower, you'll get an audience with an attitude. The Texans played their music, and they played it with conviction; people thanked them for that. (Daniel)
I liked this band less than The Dutch Connection, the singer was off-key several times and some songs were just too long and couldn't hold my attention at all. (Marlies)
PLATITUDE raised some eyebrows because they looked like an avant-garde popband, but not as much with their performance. The melodic band with two guitarists and two keyboardists couldn't impress the prog audience much and didn't get a lot of response to their attempts to get them to clap and sing along. People who knew their album (not me) had been looking forward to seeing them, but got disappointed. Daniel wrote a hilarious comparison to the Kelly Family that was a bit too long for this review, but here's the rest. (Marlies)
Seriously. I wanted to like Platitude's music. I didn't like the album "Nine" but I thought, well, if they're really into their stuff, they can win me over live and I can listen to the album again and love it. The music, live, was worse than on the album: boring and pointlessly pop-ish. But even if I wanted to concentrate on the music, I couldn't, simply because of the god awfully embarrassing stage show. If we leave the obvious Kelly Family references aside, there's still the singer. At first he only raised eyebrows with his silly outfit and his overactive jumping around. When he started his first attempt at making the crowd clap along, people ignored him. A good frontman senses that the mood is not with him and gives it a rest. Instead, he insisted. It became impolite, then it became obnoxious. He constantly chanted rhythmic "hey, hey, hey"'s along to their music, trying to make a single soul in the audience react. No one did. We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders, slightly amused. Then, there was a singalong. You guessed right: No one sang along. No one even KNEW what the hell we were supposed to sing. Finally, the most embarrassing moment in a long string of them came at the end of the concert when we gave them some polite "cool, you're done, thanks for playing" applause: He took the microphone and started chanting "Platitude, Platitude", as if to tell us to repeat after him. Do they know what a raised middle finger means in Sweden? (Daniel)
ADAGIO got a lot more response luckily, not in the last place because the new singer Gus was a good frontman. I didn´t think he could reach David Readman´s level vocally, but ok. The band was pretty heavy and bombastic, but unfortunately Stephan Forte's guitar was way too low in the mix. (Marlies)
A definitely nice, if not really amazing band. I liked "Sanctus Ignus" in spite of myself: I don't usually do high-pitched, power-metalish (think straight snare on one and three for four consecutive bars or other such cruelties against music) stuff. They could have had potential, had we heard their instruments. The sound had already been pretty bad during The Dust Connection and All Too Human (Platitude was too funny for me to pay attention to the sound), but Adagio takes the price for worst sound of the festival. They might have to share it with Tomorrow's Eve, I'm not sure. The bass was painfully too loud, the guitar was not present in the mix. I spoke to Rene, the organizer of Progpower, about this problem. Essentially, what he said is this: after a band is signed on to the festival, they're asked to send something to the festival so the sound engineers can check it out but unfortunately the only ones with good sound are those who bring their own sound engineers. It really is a pity.
Gus, the new singer, did a very nice show, the first frontman with a good crowd feeling, including some trick he already pulled on PP USA this year: while introducing him, the band played some sort of samba, and as a singalong (which actually worked here), he had us all chant "Chupa Meu Pao". Let us assume that he merely asked us to eat his pastries, and that there was no innuendo whatsoever in those words. (Daniel)
René was very excited to finally have the Australian ALCHEMIST on the bill. I had heard they were good and atmospheric and I should check it out. Well, they forgot to tell me it was so fucking heavy that it would blow even me (a more thrash/death than pure prog fan) away!! Their industrial, heavy thrash/death with clean as well as death vocals impressed me so much I went to buy the last two CDs afterwards, but I have to say that the live show was way way heavier. The big surprise of the festival for me! (Marlies)
There were moments where I just closed my eyes and let the music work on me. It was like a beautiful meditation, only instead 
of seashores rushing or winds howling, you had bombs and dying children screaming, and instead of guiding pictures of wide meadows or inspiring mountain ranges, you had the fucking fields of hell. I am trying to communicate how they were *more* than just very good, very rhythmic, very progressive death metal; there were odd loops of weird guitar sounds and other assorted strangenesses, always surprising, always fitting, always very beautiful. Alchemist were engrossing, powerful, heavy, and at the same time always interesting. First real highlight of the festival. (Daniel)
Well, Devin Townsend surely is a controversial character: Some are turned off by his weird and noisy music, some seem to worship him. First of all: I really, really love "Infinity", and really, really couldn't care less for "Ocean Machine". "Physicist" has yet to be classified, and that's all I have from Devin. I didn't expect to like a lot except for the songs from "Infinity". I was pretty wrong. I loved everything. The sound was close to perfect. Imagine compressed noise modeled and shaped into beautiful things. That's DEVIN TOWNSEND BAND's sound, especially live. Everything had a very, very noisy sound, at least as noisy as "Infinity", everything was very, very heavy (and actually, listening to some of the stuff in their album incarnation right after the concert, I hardly recognized them; I think he has a hidden dial on his guitar that goes from "pussy sound" to "absolute complete destruction", and he turned it all the way up for this gig), and I loved it. The crowds went positively wild, and when I wanted to dance to "Bad Devil" (yes, I'm a man and I dance, wanna fight? ;P), I accidentally stumbled into a moshpit. I felt 16 again. There was some mean action in the crowd, and "Bad Devil" is definitely the best song for that kind of stuff. Devin said some funny things in between songs, but none of us really spoke Canadian. (Daniel)
Hey, I do!!! Actually Nico and I had just come back from Canada 4 days earlier and since it changed my life (I seriously want to emigrate), it was all I wanted to talk about to the Canadians. Oh wait, that was after the show ;) Back to the performance. DTB isn't nearly as noisy as Strapping Young Lad and, as Daniel said, contains more beauty (atmosphere). Sometimes dreamy, then suddenly heavy again, but whatever Devin does, he puts his heart and soul in. I didn't get a lot of titles, but from their latest release "Accelerated Evolution" they played a.o. "Suicide" and "Storm", dedicated by Devin to his wife. Wicked show, eh! (Marlies)
SUNDAY
The next morning starts Canadian as well! Not so long before the festival INTO ETERNITY was added to the bill, but due to gigs in other cities (Kataklysm tour) the only slot they could do was opening on Sunday. Of course they were extremely happy to return to Baarlo and their former labelboss René after 3 years! They've been touring a lot since they've been signed by Century Media and that has also led to some line-up changes. New since the last release "Buried In Oblivion" are Dirtbred's Troy Bleigh on bass, American drummer Adam Sagan, who is a young and very eager talent and another American, Within Another's Dean Sternberg from upstate NY. Adam and Troy fit right in. Dean however is not a born frontman (he's a guitarplayer first) and is still a bit too shy to keep up with the rest of the band and the aggression of the music. Vocally he's a great talent though and he did his job well! Although guitarist/singer Tim Roth (who had just cut off his long hair!) is the only founding member left, the band keeps progressing in a natural way as Into Eternity. Guitarist Rob Doherty joined during the recordings of "Buried In Oblivion" and has proven to be an 
immense asset to the band with his wicked playing (and songwriting) and incredible deep growls! They give me a sort of adrenaline rush each time he belches them out, awesome! After the show there was some quick time for fan pics outside, then they had to rush off to their night-gig. (additional info: in November Dean decided not to continue in order to take care of money/job related stuff at home, the band then found the enthusiastic missing link they needed in Vancouver's Omega Crom's Stu Block!) (Marlies)
This was the band that set the standards for day two, and only one band should reach those standards. The new guitarist's (Rob) grunting is unholy. It seemed to come from the bowels of hell, and he must be the result of some sort of Scottish man-bagpipes cloning experiment, because he never fucking ran out of air (the secret is that he's also INhaling while grunting!! - Marlies). Incredible stuff. Everyone else was performing perfectly as well. Considering Into Eternity opened the second day, there was an insane crowd. There was also a five minutes "we want more" chant after the concert, although I'm certain most people knew there was no time for an encore. It didn't stop them from asking for it anyway, they really, 
honestly wanted it. This was the only time during this PP I heard the audience ask for an encore from a band that wasn't headlining. (Daniel)
setlist Into Eternity:
Beginning Of The End
Splintered Visions
Elysium Dream
Paralyzed
3 Dimensional Aperture
Embraced By Desolation
Spiralling Into Depression
Distant Pale Future
Shallow
About NOVACT Daniel said "The Artists Formerly Known as Morgana-X. They had a HUGE handicap: playing right after Into Eternity". He thought that they were boring, but I didn't agree, I thought it was pretty cool - just not right after Into Eternity. I esp. like Eddy's singing a lot, he can be so emotional. They did a.o. "So Help Me God" and the semi-ballad "Flower", about a little girl's abuse, from the upcoming album "Tales From The Soul" for Sensory Records and the emotional "Eternal Life" and I think also "Path Of Daggers", two promo songs that appear on the album as well. (Marlies)
It's guess-the-chord time, tonight with TOMORROW'S EVE! That's right, this PP, especially for you elite guitarplayers in the crowd, we decided not to put the guitars into the mix at all, so you can look at the guitarist's hands and imagine the chords! It's good training for that absolute hearing of yours and great fun for the whole family! Also, we mix the singer so loud he's painful in your ears, we'll have the bass clip in a mess of noise, oh and occasionally you'll get to hear the keyboards too. TOMORROW'S EVE are a really, really good prog band from Germany. Their album "Mirrors Of Creation" has a lot of truly unique, inspired, amazing passages on it. If you saw them at PP 04 tho, you' ll have to take my word for it (or buy the album; this is the preferred modus operandi). The mix was a bad joke. I knew the album and mostly I could imagine what stuff should sound like. That was the only way to enjoy the concert. The singer had really good stage presence. I would say, next to Heavy Devvy, this was the guy with the best crowd interaction. He climbed speakers, made jokes, enjoyed the music, and once even ran through the audience singing into his wireless microphone. Speaking of enjoying their music: Looking into the faces of the instrumentalists was a pleasure. You could see honest grins and people, truly, really enjoying what they were doing. This carried over on the audience, and when the singer asked for a scream ("Scream for me Baarlo!"), he got quite a scream. Remember what I said about earning your respect? That's what Tomorrow's Eve did, as best as they could. (Daniel)
Progpower 2004 was a weird dichotomy between very heavy and very atmospheric bands. Into Eternity ruled the heavy bands section (followed, very very closely, by Devin and Alchemist), RIVERSIDE... well, there wasn't even any real competition. Riverside was an incredible experience. You had to be there to understand. Riverside play a unique style of music: they use a lot keyboards and synths in very good and inventive ways, guitar and bass share both melodic and rhythmic functions, and Piotr's drums never rest and still never annoy. It's the kind of music that enchants you, sends you into a meditation. While the drummer played a lot of seemingly complex stuff, it fitted perfectly, provided a unique background for the three others. Mariusz, the bassist, also did the singing (aided by just a little wodka - it's Polish vodka, so I'm spelling it with a w), and he did a wonderful job. The lyrics are reflexive, mostly centered around emotions or symbolic actions, and delivered in a strange, soft, soothing way. Mariusz sings with a low, beautiful voice, only occasionally breaking into a grunt or two, repeating very many lines in a fashion reminiscent of religious mantras. The same can be said for Piotr's guitarplaying: sometimes he will have a beautiful, short melody and loop it over the rest of the music, sometimes he will do something like a solo for very long periods of time. There was never any guitar hero style show of skills, but always so much feeling in every turn of the melody. His guitar was probably closer to the classical idea of singing than Mariusz's singing. Finally, the keyboards were exactly what I want in keyboards: Not merely background tapestry (while there were of course some typical atmospheric chords), but really very interesting. They closed the perfect show in the perfect way: they played "The Curtain Falls", but instead of the normal end, they looped the last part and every musician had his own exit. First, Piotr put down his guitar, took a bow, and exited the stage left. Next, Mariusz played a lost note on his bass, set it down, bowed, and left the stage right. Now the lights centered in on Piotr on the drums, who played a
few last beats, then got up, bowed his head to the audience, and walked off stage as well. Finally, only the beautiful eerie keyboard music played, and in the middle of a chord progression, Michal took his hands off the keys, bowed to us, and went off stage. I still have shivers running down my back recalling this absolutely perfect end. (Daniel)
Unfortunately neither Daniel nor I could write something constructive down for KATATONIA. Guess it's a matter or taste or mood? All we could up with was "yawn", sorry. (Marlies)
Pretty much the same goes for THE GATHERING. Marlies has never liked them, so to her that wasn't a surprise. But I wanted to like the Gathering. Honestly, I wanted to. I love the CDs, especially the recent stuff, I absolutely loved that weird antenna thingie they had on the stage (an instrument that detects the proximity of your hand and plays a tone based on that), all the percussion that was going on, the strange things they did with the synths, Anneke's flawless singing, the cute chick on the bass... but I couldn't love the music. It just didn't work live, not at all. I restate the point I had made before the concert: There is some music that cannot be played live properly. Anneke also did a faux-pas of speaking Dutch. I mean, come on, it's an international audience and even the lame small bands managed to speak English to us. That's just not polite. As a drumming friend of mine observed (and I do not really have an opinion on this; I thought the drumming was very much background noise in the Gathering, and it was never meant to be anything else), the drummer was apparently really, really bad. Words such as 'microtiming' or 'no groove at all' were used. I left after a few songs, most of which I recognized and didn't like live. (Daniel)
Nico and I stayed for some after-partying, but again, all I could do was bother everyone with my homesickness for Canada. I
really applaud DTB's Mike Young esp. for sticking with me and talking with me about BC and Saskatchewan (we'd wanna go to our Into Eternity-friends' city Regina in that prairie-province). Devin Townsend was smarter. He just said "what?! vagina?!" and changed the subject to sex until he was called away for a fan pic ;) Thanks once again to René, Claudia and everyone at Sjiwa for a wonderful weekend!
submitted by Marlies 26.07.2005
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