Foto: Sadan Ekdemir
On this very warm summer day in Oslo (22 degrees, tropic!), it wasn’t easy to expect how many people would choose to be indoors to see a metal show of a band with their latest album title: Winter’s Gate. However, I was wrong to be concerned, it was a nearly full-house show with a full throttle metal feeling involved.
Insomnium's latest album, Winter’s Gate holds their golden signature sound, melodic, progressive, aggressive, atmospheric. Looking at their discography, starting the career as a melodic death metal album, they actually kept pushing the boundaries and came to their current setup.
Last night’s show consisted of two parts; starting with the ‘new’ Insomnium sound, beholding the full album performance of Winter’s Gate. And the second part where they explored their older materials. Whether you like melodic metal or not, I’d recommend you to have a look at the Winter’s Gate album, you won’t regret. Hearing the entire Winter’s Gate album from beginning to end live was a memorable experience. Mixing the acoustic tunes with heavy guitar tunes was like being in the medieval times, in an iron castle, hearing the clashes of war lords. Plus, the clever light shows holding shades of blue, they managed to bring the winter into this summer day!
Right after the Winter's Gate album show finished, with a little introduction of the band, they prepared the audience for what was about to come. Starting with ‘The Gate’, as an introduction to one of the hits of their ‘Above the weeping world’ album, ‘Mortal Share’! Whilst reaching the crushing climax of the night, Insomnium got the entire audience head bang in sync for the whole evening. It was worth noticing how engaged the audience was to the songs and to the entire band. Especially the communication of the guitarist Markus Vanhalla with the crowd was a blast, reminded of watching a heavy metal show in the 90s, full of energy and dynamism.
After that Insomnium chose to explore their newer material and follow with ‘Ephemeral’ but again, went back in time afterwards with ‘Change of Heart’. The finished the set with ‘The Promethean Song’. The crowd was begging to see more, so they came back to play two extra songs for the encore part, ‘The Primeval Dark’ and ‘While We Sleep’.
It was as remarkable show, and an astonishing performance from the Finnish metal masters. Looking forward to seeing them again.
