After two full-lengths, the Finnish doom metal band Swallow the Sun was finally touring Europe. Not too many people showed up this night, however.

The band that opened this night was the French doom/death metal Inborn Suffering, who were added to the bill by the Baroeg, and thus not part of the tour. The band suffered from a bad sound, which made the guitars and vocals hard to hear, after 2 songs or so it became a bit better. So I didn’t get a good impression of what they sound like, but what I heard it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great either.

Before the Dawn was the support act on the tour. They are also Finnish but not doom – more rock with metal overtones. Nothing really interesting to me, but what they did wasn’t bad just to hear once or so.

After they changed the drumkit entirely, it was finally time for Swallow the Sun. The band started with the opening track of their latest album – The Giant – which set the atmosphere for the concert. Unfortunately some minor mistakes surfaced during the song, but were handled professionally. Followed by another track off the new album – Descending Winters. Overall the sound was quite good, however the keyboards and clean vocals were hard to hear (but the grunts weren’t!). They played a mixture of songs from both albums, in total a mere 7 songs. After about 50 minutes and no encore the gig was over, which was a bit short.

Setlist:

• The Giant
• Descending Winters
• Out of This Gloomy Light
• Silence of the Womb
• Hold This Woe
• The Ship
• Swallow