Shining was doing a tour through Europe for the release of their fifth album “V Halmstad” and their only Dutch show was in Arnhem so that is where I went on Friday the 20th of July.

The opening act was the dutch band Isthar. These guys play a mixture of death and black metal, but instead of normal set-up these guys have two bass-players – one who plays a 5 string bass and the other a 10 (!) string bass – and on top of that they add a timpani player. The latter is nevertheless not very audible and most of the time the guy was drinking beer. The small stage of the Goudvishal was filled up so there was little room for the band to move around. The music had some interesting ideas and parts but at other times ended up in a muddy mess of noise. The mediocre sound was not helping much either. The weakest part was the vocals. The singer mixed black metal screams with grunts but was good at neither.

Then there was a second Dutch band: Salacious Gods. This is a rather dull straightforward black metal band, who generally play at high speed, with some mid-pace sections. The latter are okay but these blastbeat-driven sections all sound the same and bore me. The silly corpsepaint made it look childish. Then again this isn’t a style of music I enjoy at all.

Then it was finally time for the headliner Shining. This band – well basically Niklas “Kvarforth” Olsson with some musicians as nearly everything is composed by Kvavorth – plays a mixture of black metal and not too slow doom metal but incorporating lots of melody and aggression. Whilst the rest of the band was setting up their gear, Niklas was performing some weird meditation act including various drinks (Beer, cola, whisky), cigarettes and a razor blade. When they finally started to play he had several cuts on his lower arms that bled gently. The set consisted of a balanced combination of old and new material. The titles are too hard to remember as most are in Swedish, but at least include The Claws of Perdition and Submit to Self Destruction. Niklas interacted a lot with the audience – sometimes friendly (e.g. hand-kissing a girl) and sometimes rather unfriendly – he also continued his mutilations by cutting himself more, whipping himself with his belt and putting out a cigarette on his belly; whereas the band played the songs with dedication and very tightly, ostensibly undisturbed by Niklas behaviour. Musically (the most important aspect of course) the gig was very good, but all Niklas’ acts I could do without. The guy writes genius music, but also has some personality problems. Fortunately it didn’t end up as silly as the release party of “Halmstad”.