ProgPower Europe 2006, JC Sjiwa, Baarlo, The Netherlands, 30th September - 1st October 2006
Unfortunately, I missed the Friday night pre-show party at which Zero Gravity and Dreamscape set the scene. But kicking off the main event on Saturday afternoon were Another Messiah, a Dutch quartet with an arresting frontman whose vocals pulled from melody to extreme metal. And the clarinet solo was…uh… different, especially as it gave way to a death metal grunt. An interesting start to the afternoon.
A double-whammy from Italy followed. Chaoswave take the Lacuna Coil template of male and female vocalists and rock out with conviction; Ephel Duath, on the other hand, tread a decidedly different path. Describing themselves as “jazz metal confusionists”, the band play complicated jazz fusion structures while vocalist Luciano Lorusso George stands completely immobile; then things explode into almost black metal workouts with George barking extreme vocals and flapping his hands like a supercharged chicken. About half the crowd didn’t get it, while the other half lapped it up; very much an acquired taste.
The day is structured so that after three bands there is an hour’s break to wander around the (practically deserted) streets of Baarlo to find something to eat;
after which, Scar Symmetry really set things alight. A blazing sixty minutes of high-octane metal just underlines what we at PPUK missed out on, and was most definitely the highlight of the day. In an interview for PPUK earlier on, drummer Henrik Ohlsson had said that set-closer ‘The Illusionist’ was “just another song as far as we were concerned,” but it’s the one that everyone in the venue knew and it’s the one that took the roof off! Despite the hard edged songs, Scar Symmetry have a sense of humour about them as witnessed by bassist Kenneth Seil’s perpetual smile all weekend and what can only be described as a maypole dance as Seil and guitarist Jonas Kjellgren skipped around each other to untangle their leads. Wish I’d bought a t-shirt now!
Textures had the unenviable task of following Sweden’s favourite sons, all heavy duty and heavy riffs underpinning extreme vocals. Some light and shade in an otherwise excellent set wouldn’t have gone amiss though. Denmark’s Mercenary brought Saturday’s proceedings to a close. Riding high on some 
great reviews for their current album ‘The Hours that Remain’ (which went on to win the ‘Danish Metal Award for Album Of The Year’), the band raced through a no-holds-barred set of classy metal. They’ve already played a handful of UK dates, and are certainly worth checking out next time they’re over here.
1:45 on Sunday afternoon, and Sphere Of Souls set the ball rolling once more. The young Dutch band are cast in the mould of Fates Warning, but chose to air a set that was unfortunately a little one-dimensional. They only really cut loose during their last song, a Fates Warning cover which stood head and shoulders above their self-penned material.
Nova Art are a Russian five-piece of mixed styles and dreadful haircuts. Good band though. A couple of keyboard glitches threatened to rain on their box of fireworks, but, once sorted, things settled down nicely. They were, however, completely upstaged by Voyager, multi-national upstarts based in Australia. Voyager were exciting, lively and, more to the point, fun. With vocalist and ivory-tinkler Daniel Estrin’s keyboards set front and centre, he appeared to be presiding over events like a High Court judge while the rest of the band worked the stage. A measure of their talent is that the
longer their set progressed, the more and more people came in until the place was packed, and at one point Dreamscape’s Wolfgang Kerinnis gestured at the stage and gave the PPUK team a thumbs-up. And then came ‘The Medley’, a heads-down workout that included, amongst other things, snippets of James Browns’ ‘I Feel Good’, ‘Smoke On The Water’, ‘Come As You Are’, ‘Killing In The Name Of…’ and Manowar’s ‘Crown And The Ring’. Bizarre, challenging and extremely entertaining!
Coming after the break, the unrelentingly gloomy but technically magical Dark Suns were perhaps a strange way to open the final session, and having a singing drummer in the unquestionably talented Niko Knappe deprives the show of a visual focus. It can’t have helped matters that they’d lost their bassist in September so ex-Pain Of Salvation four-stringer (well, five-stringer to be exact) Kristoffer Gildenlow stepped in to join Dark Suns for their set. Great to listen to, but not that exciting to watch.
If ever a band was going to grab Baarlo by the scruff of its neck and give it a damn good shake, it was Communic, and boy, did they deliver! Their hour flew by, the band powering through a great set which showcased the very best of their two albums. Although there’s only three of them, Oddleif Stensland, Erik Mortensen and Tor Atle Andersen have the energy and the full sound of a five-piece and an attitude to match. In complete contrast, Riverside calmed things back down. Opening up all moody and backlit, their first song concentrated on building an atmosphere minute by minute, and then the Poles proceeded to display the diversity and musicianship for which they are renowned. They packed the place out, and I don’t think anyone went home disappointed.
(c) John Tucker February 2007