Originally posted in Valkyrian Music.

Equaleft invited three bands to join the party. The first one was metalcore act Forbidden To Fly. They’re currently preparing their upcoming debut album, meaning not only writing songs but also gathering the financial means for it. And since they’re young students, that may take a while. There’s a 2-track demo and a single on bandcamp already though, and I saw a few people singing along.

They were pretty comfortable on stage, although singer Ricardo seemed a little nervous at first. But soon he loosened up and was moving around the little free space the stage offered. Around the third song or so the power went down. Still not sure what the hell happened, but luckily the blackout didn’t last long, people even joked screaming stuff like “take your hand off my wallet!”, and it didn’t happen again.

MP Marcelo from the band Monolyth joined in for the last song, but I honestly didn’t hear the title. In fact, I only took notice of “Reflections” and “The Tides”, and that was early in the gig. One way or another, those kids did very good.

PS – I’ve meanwhile learnt that the track sung by Marcelo was “Succubus”.

www.facebook.com/forbiddentofly

I really enjoyed Tales For The Unspoken at Moita Metal Fest a couple of months ago (read report here) but for some reason, and despite the heat and smaller venue, I liked this gig more. Nothing much has changed since that gig – bass player Nuno is still very expressive, singer Marco still curses like a mf (sorry, couldn’t help it)… Marco dedicated “Soul For A Soul” (which he announced “Soul For A Fucking Soul”) to Hugo Gama, drummer in Spectral Flood, who’s recently passed away, and for “I, Claudios”, a song to be featured in the next album, he called on stage “someone who’s not very famous” – which obviously turned out untrue, as it was Miguel Inglês, the singer in the band hosting the event.

The crowd singing the tribal chanting in the last song “N’Takuba Wena” was stronger and the moshing more intense, so maybe that’s what made the difference – the empathy between band and audience. Whatever it was, it was great.

www.facebook.com/talesfortheunspoken

Colosso‘s sound was way too loud – so much that a shrill feedback was heard at some point. But no one seemed to mind – the intricate patterns still pleased the prog and experimental fans, while the brutality was all the mosh horde really cared about. Personally, I’m not a fan of experimental death metal and everything sounded too much of the same. Singer/guitarist Max didn’t speak much either – and one time when he did the mike wasn’t working – , nor did they have a setlist that I could take a look at, so I really don’t have much technical details to give you. I can say though that in the three years they’ve been around, a full-length CD (“Abrasive Peace”) and an EP (“Thallium”) were released and highly acclaimed, and a new EP, “Foregone Semblances”, is on its way (25th June). So given the proximity between the three release dates, I’m quite sure the setlist had a little bit of them all.

Despite my slight boredom, that was obviously on me, as the majority was thrilled with the performance. And even if sometimes doesn’t feel like it, this is still a democracy and so the majority wins – therefore, Colosso were awesome.

www.facebook.com/colossometal