Gig review: Mgła, Martwa Aura

It is always a curiosity for me to see a band name appear twice on the main page and I think the last time that this happened was when I was riding along with "Vestiges" back in 2012. That adventure was pre-planned however, but this one came as an unexpected surprise.

Gig took place on September 18th in "Dom Omladine" ("Youth Center") in Belgrade. Truth be told, I haven't been there since 2017 when I saw "Alcest" play, something that I completely failed to review which is actually bad because their concert was excellent. In the back of my mind I'm thinking about doing a late review of all those shows I didn't talk about, but we'll see, that's a topic for another occasion. In any case, this is one of those cult-status venues that never lets you down and I absolutely adore it due to its sheer spaciousness and the fact that it always has superb sound quality.

Worth mentioning is that the information which I saw regarding this gig was that it was completely sold out. I caught this the day after the show and it made me insanely happy, especially when you could see literally everyone going out of the venue with amazement on their faces. Warms my heart to know that so many people love "Mgła" in Belgrade.

Right off the bat, I was somewhat late to the gig and I completely missed the opening band "Dagorath". This fact sucks and is sad, but what can you do. I talked a little bit about them with a friend who also attended and she seemed extremely pleased, so it might be a good idea to do some homework and listen to their recordings.

The first band that I did see live that night was "Martwa Aura" and I'll give my Slavic-speaking readers one try to guess what the name means. For those not fluent, it means "dead aura" and for some reason I find that name to be extremely evocative. Truth be told, I was not familiar with the Polish quintet, but after their performance I definitely got the wish to check out what they offer on recordings. The funeral black metal band from Poznan kicked it off instantly. No talking, no theatrics, minimal movement on stage. The main focus definitely falls on the singer who is a truly imposing figure, drawing attention with his slow, hulking movement and a commanding aura, if you will.

Their set was fast, aggressive and at times exceptionally melodic. The drums were a joy to focus on, since some songs featured interesting changes of rhythm, all the while the string section was shredding without a break. What I found to be unique about their sound was the addition of clean vocal singing. It seemed so well placed, especially during intense moments when the instrumental section was chaotic yet the singing added a contrast which was almost soothing.
"Martwa Aura" was definitely a pleasant surprise of the evening. Be sure to check them out, you can do so on their bandcamp page here or get in touch with them via facebook page here.

I would never manage to guess that I'll be seeing "Mgła" play twice, let alone in such a short time span and even less in my hometown. As I was listening to their new, recently released album called "Age Of Excuse" and then also re-listening their older material prior to this show, I came to realize that I was still under extreme impression from their previous concert. That entire journey to Szalki-Sziget along with the time spent on the festival and finally "Mgła" itself (about all of which you can read here) was an endeavor drenched in passion and I jumped into it without much thought, heart first. I was entirely consumed by various emotions for those two days that the entire thing somehow resonated within me even after so much time. This time around however, I decided to reset and cool down, so that I could experience the show clearheaded and with a bit more technical approach.

This plan turned out to be impossible, since this band doesn't care what your current state of mind is. The chilled out attitude was immediately crushed the second they got up on stage. The seemingly familiar beast was in front of me again and it shattered me without hesitation once again. They do this within the first chord and it is unbelievable how their sound induces some kind of entranced state of mind where time is irrelevant and you completely forget about your surroundings, your complete focus is on their music. I experienced this only with a handful of bands and it is a merit worthy of coronation. 

There's just something utterly fascinating about watching them play live, this time directly from the front row. I was staring at their guitar player who was just a few steps away from me and I couldn't help but notice how he reminded me of a sculpture by Antoni Pujol (this one) and then realizing that this menacing figure is performing a song about nihilism, civilizational spread of rot, death and the bleakness of existence... and there is just something entrancing and grotesque about the entire scene.
And what to say about the sound of the hooded quartet other that it is a force to be reckoned with, simple as that. Their signature was as strong as ever, a remorseless and relentlessly thrilling tempo that doesn't stop for a second. It's impressive to notice the amount of precision and quality that they show while creating such a raw and violent sound, since they truly sounded as good as on their recorded material. I have to say that the overall quality was so much better than the previous time when I saw them play, especially regarding the clearness of the vocals. This is largely in part because of the venue. The acoustics of the space superbly supported this audible onslaught and the band was free to unleash whatever kind of destruction they deemed fitting. Some tunes I've heard before, others were new to my ears. "Exercises in Futility I", "Age of Excuse II", "Mdłości II", "With Hearts Towards None VII", these are just some of the songs that echoed in Belgrade that night (you can see the full setlist on the trophy I managed to get after the gig). The previous "Mgła" gig review which I wrote ended with the lines from "Exercises in Futility V", one of my absolute favorite tracks of the band. Back then in Hungary they didn't perform the said song, but it was somehow fitting to end the review with those lines since I personally felt rather exalted that I finally managed to see them play live. However, this time around they did and my entire being was exhilarated to witness this. Like with my review, ending the show with that song seemed perfect in some way, the last sounds dying even after the band itself left the stage minutes ago.

It is difficult writing reviews for bands like this. Even if I go around the fact that I love "Mgła" with a passion and the fact that I might be biased because of these emotions, it is an exhausting task to pick right words because I feel they will hardly do the band justice. In fact, I think this review is a chaotic piece of nonsense and that it is too short to express everything on my mind. But I find it okay to post, since I'm also under the impression that senseless texts without any proper structure speak volumes by themselves. It might simply be another form of being "stunned", "speechless" or "mind blown". Maybe it's too soon to write a review, because all these  chaotic thoughts haven't matured in my mind yet. Or maybe this is just proof of "Mgła" being one of those bands which can't be confined by words. Maybe...

"Acknowledge healthy confusion..."

Festival report: Rockmaraton 2019, day three

I'm back, this time not in black, but with some black! This previous weekend I've attended a, for me predominantly black, metal festival in Hungary and have decided to finally sit myself down and write something on here. The bands which I saw on this occasion are listed below and I'll let you try and figure out which group made me want to pull the trigger and travel so desperately into the deep clutches of Hungary:

- Perihelion

- Carach Angren

- Mgła

You guessed it...

To kick this review off, let's talk a little bit about the fest itself. Rockmaraton is an annual festival in Hungary which brings together a huge list of performers from every corner of the world of metal and an even bigger score of dedicated fans. The range of bands goes from US-based hardcore "Terror" to the legendary "Paradise Lost", the progressive hit of "Jinjer", the good ol' classic "Soulfly" and all the way from Russia the "Siberian Meat Grinder" powerhouse and many, many more. This impressive list of artists was arranged over a 5-day long festival, although yours truly cherry-picked only a single day to visit.
This year the festival was located on the Szalki-Sziget island in Dunaújváros, some 70km southeast from Budapest. To be completely honest, it was a real endeavor to locate and travel there since the trip involved a 6 hour van ride, an hour and a half train ride, taking a local bus to... well, somewhere and then walking a few kilometers. Despite the "hardships", I was insanely excited about this trip, since I missed the get down and dirty way of travelling where you have everything packed on your back, when you're on the road for 7+ hours, when you sleep (if at all) on painfully hard ground cause you didn't bring a soft enough mat... but fuck it, you're doing it cause you want to sacrifice 2 days of your life just to see that one band you love.

At the end of the long journey you are greeted by a wonderful little island housing the festival. Four stages, several tents with various other activities (among which was one where you could get corpse paint done!), numerous food and drink stands, an official band merch shop, several wide camping areas and even a large swimming area in the surrounding Danube river, all of these are situated around the spacious grounds of the island. Getting from where we set up camp close to the entrance of the festival towards the farthest stage is a rather nice, long walk.

"Perihelion" was the first band of the day that I managed to dedicate my full attention to. This Hungarian post metal quartet caught my ear with loud, piercing, semi-clean vocals which stood out in the midst of a massive, rolling avalanche of sound produced by the instrumental section. I was instantly hooked by this strong vocal/instrumental contrast which persisted during their entire set, the divergence growing into high impact crescendos at the end of each song. There are moments where the singer would break free from the gentle, droning melody and burst out screaming his lungs out (ah!) and you, as the listener, just get completely swept away. I did a bit of research on them after the festival and have stumbled on their bandcamp page (which you can visit here) on a description of their album "Örvény" (meaning "Maelstrom" in Hungarian) and it is absolutely accurate: "[album] is to be interpreted as a single journey with its seven songs seamlessly woven into each other... [lyrics] revolve around dreamlike passages towards the subconscious." Couldn't have said it better myself. Definitely check them out!

"Carach Angren" was next in line and this band was hyped by my travelling companion, who saw them live on a previous occasion. "Trust me, they are fun," was all I've been told and it's hard to imagine a black metal act being "fun", in a literal sense of the word. Needless to say I was utterly surprised in the most pleasant way possible! The symphonic black metal trio (a quartet on this occasion) from the Netherlands put up an amazing performance which is certainly memorable. Maybe some of my readers remember how mind blown I was by the stunning "Cattle Decapitation" show which I covered here and pretty much the same amount of exploding brain matter can be applied here. My, oh my, where to begin? It is hard to decide what to write about first, since both the instruments and the vocals are amazing on their own and are absolutely worth the praise, but the sheer beauty and brutality when the two are mixed together is astonishing! It has been a long while since I saw the two sections compliment each other so much, both in an audio and in a visual respect. Audibly, this band is a cacophony of pure black metal savagery wrapped in veil of symphonic insanity, yet precisely cut by maddening technical start-stop rhythms. Visually, they are a rush of blood to the head caused by flickering lights and a plethora of nonstop movement which your eyes are trying to soak up. The band as a whole are a sight to behold, but the singer absolutely takes the cake. An insanely talented showman holding the crowd in the palm of his hand, mesmerizing with constant movements which were somehow precisely in tune with the sounds coming from the instruments, something that it is truly impossible to explain without you actually seeing it for yourself.

Important to note is that the band had some technical difficulties during their show (which was in no way on their part), yet despite that they still managed to keep the crowd standing on the top of their toes, hungry for more. The band would simply continue blasting away after those small breaks, not losing a single drop of momentum. If you haven't figured out the bottom of the line, it's simply "just go and see them live, if you can." Maybe they are not your cup of tea, but even then you're in for a performance worth remembering! They have a load of material on their repertoire, so check them out and support them on their website found here.

"Mgła". "Fog" in Polish and rightfully named so, as it managed to cloud a score of other bands that I've been listening to for years before discovering them. They were evading my radar for an extended period of time since their formation in the early 2000's (well, that is if you count the demos or the first EP in 2006; 2012 if you count when they actually started to perform live), but once I heard their "Exercises in Futility" album back in 2015 I was swallowed whole. This was THE band, that one act that you discover once in some years which immediately sticks and it's there to stay. The evocation of misanthropic feelings borne out of human negligence and greed, wrapped in the tones of desperate soundscapes, the nihilism and the poetry, the noises of untamed rage and the painful ache of silence ending it all. All the while adorned in visual aesthetics which would make Tolkien's Nazgul envious. "Mgła" was a beast and I was spreading my arms towards it, prepared and willing to be devoured. 
The wish to see them perform live was instantly born, yet I've been unlucky with that endeavor ever since 2015. On one occasion, my trip got postponed and I wasn't in town for the gig. On another, the concert I targeted was sold out in a matter of days. So when I saw Rockmaraton adding their name to the lineup I knew that this was it, now or never.

In the end, it was now and the moment was staggering. Darkness crept on stage that faithful night on the 11th of July and four hooded figures emerged from its depths. "Exercises in Futility I" exploded through the venue and there was simply no way to escape the audio/visual onslaught which ensued. "Mgła" were vicious and relentless in their attack on all the senses of the crowd. "Exercises in Futility IV", "Mdłości II", "With Hearts Toward None I", "Exercises in Futility II", "Groza III", they all lined up and melded into one huge unstoppable wave which continuously crashed down on us. It was superbly chaotic and powerful, yet at the same time remarkable how much I could simply feel all the qualities and sensations which I loved and respected on their recordings. At the same time, it was visually pleasing to see them in the flesh at last, black figures staring back at you with nothing but abysmal darkness underneath their hoods, an almost nietzschean perspective. It proves a good point, in fact, that none of this is about them, it doesn't matter who the people behind the hoods are, it doesn't matter who you and me are, it's purely about the music and the words screamed towards you and the message and meaning which they convey. This blissful chaos lasted for an exciting long hour and the ending of "Exercises in Futility VI" brought their set to a close, a perfect conclusion to a mind bending experience which left me thoroughly trembling when the final tone died.

"...As if all this was something more than another footnote on a postcard from nowhere, 

another chapter in the handbook for exercises in futility..."

Similarly to what I commented on "Carach Angren", the band had difficulty setting up prior to the set and it was apparent that they had a hard time to get their instruments in tune with the venue, which definitely left a mark on their "quality" during the show. From my experience, I'd fault the event space and not the band on this. Regardless of the issues, I still consider this "Mgła" show to be one of the highlights of this year's concert list, but it definitely left me hungry for more, since I believe that hearing them on their own solo concert would be a much more spectacular event. Patiently I shall wait for another opportunity. Until then, you can get in touch and support them here.

That is it for now, hope you enjoyed this brief festival report. I'm in the mood where I'm rather starved for writing more and there's so much to write about, so hopefully I'll update the blog again sooner rather than later. Until then, blessed be.