Behemoth: QMU, Glasgow (11th February 2019)

with At The Gates and Wolves In The Throne Room

WORDS: Joanne Gray

At the QMU on a slightly chilly Monday night was this outrageous lineup for any metalhead, but particularly for those who are a fan of the more extreme side of things. Having had the same lineup over the summer in the States, it is somewhat rare for such a huge bill to continue over to this side of the Atlantic, so I was pretty stoked to see this gig, even if it was at a venue that I don't particularly like that much (we'll get onto that a wee bit later).

With doors opening late and having an odd ticket system going on (paperless tickets had to go into a separate queue and manually have your name ticked off a list), it seemed like it took a while to get into the venue. Luckily, as the first band were on an hour after doors, I made it in on time to catch all of Wolves in the Throne Room's set, even if there seemed to be a few people who didn't.

I have heard a lot about this band beforehand, but had only really had a chance to briefly listen to them before the gig. I was super impressed with this band live. I knew that they were an intricate and atmospheric black metal band with long songs, but the whole vibe of the show made it feel all the more interesting to watch. The use of some eerie sounds before the band came on, in addition to incense being burned during their set, and members drinking (seemingly) vintage wine from the bottle all added to the mood of their performance. Sometimes I find that having five members of a band placed on quite a small stage as the opener can make the performance seem claustrophobic and limited, but in this case, that worked perfectly for the sound of the band. The solemness carried through to their musical performance, with the band not saying a word in between songs, and maintaining an extremely serious demeanour. Due to the ever changing flow of the music from brutal death metal howls (shout out to their drummer for being an absolute beast on the blast beats here) to doomy stomping headbanging material and ethereal atmospheric slow sections, Wolves in the Throne Room were a really engaging band to watch, as the songs never stayed in one place for too long. Quite a feat for a set that was only three songs long. Having the keyboards being so front and centre in this band really helped build a gothic sense of drama which was really cool to experience.

I found that the crowd took a little while to properly warm up to this band due to their expansive sound, but by the end of their performance, it seemed like most people had been won over due to the enthusiastic applause and headbanging. I really enjoyed their set, and I will definitely be checking out more of their stuff in the future.

Onto a band that definitely didn't have the issue of the crowd not knowing who they were, At The Gates immediately raised the energy levels within the QMU. Playing old campy show tunes in the break between the bands, there was a sense that At The Gates had a bit of a twinkle in their eye even before they even came on stage.

This become even more evident when they opened in such a frantic style. For band whose members are all in their forties, I was immediately impressed with the sheer energy from all of them. Particularly the vocalist, who wore a grin on his face for much of the set and exuded the enthusiasm to match. The crowd responded just as rapturously, with a pit opening up as soon as the band started playing. Although the sense of claustrophobia was fully in place on stage for the previous band, for At The Gates, the claustrophobia took place within the audience, as the 900-capacity venue instantly felt too small for the level of intensity of the mosh pit. I ended up having to move back a bit as I felt like I was getting crushed by the people behind me, but even still, it was hard to avoid somebody getting thrown in your general direction. This is generally not something that I see as a bad thing, but I did get the sense that the layout of the QMU made the moshing feel more invasive and dangerous than it normally does. As such, after a few songs of blistering death metal, when the band abruptly walked off stage, my first immediate thought was that someone had been injured in the crowd. Thankfully, this wasn't the case, but the process of waiting for a good ten minutes or so for the band to come back on left a lot of confused chatter amongst the audience. When At The Gates did come back on, they didn't really explain anything (other than make a joke about something to do with the volume) but continued to play as if nothing had happened, powering through the rest of their set with the same level of energy, albeit with a few songs obviously cut off. It wasn't until after their set that I found out that a (false) fire alarm had went off so the sound was cut and the band were ushered off the stage. Apparently due to Wolves In The Throne Room's use of incense but I'm not entirely sure. Good of the venue to let us all know that, right? Although I did feel like the momentum of the gig was stalled a little bit due to the interruption, by the time At The Gates came back on stage, the crowd had regained any lost energy to continue moshing and crowd surfing until the very end.

All in all, I thought the set was decent. Although the vitality of the crowd and band was great to see, I wasn't as musically impressed by them. I wasn't sure whether it was because I had earplugs on, but the sound felt very muddy to me at times (when I took the earplugs out to check, I found the same problem in the faster sections as when I had my earplugs in), which made it harder to me to fully embrace the sound. When compared to the first band, I couldn't help but feel that At The Gates weren't as exciting to listen to and a bit bland at times. But by looking at the audience, I would probably put that mostly down to me not being that big a fan of straight up death metal, as most of the room seemed to be losing their minds. I couldn't help but feel that the technical problems put a bit of a downer on their set as well, even though the band and crowd were clearly giving everything they had to the performance.

Speaking of giving everything to a performance, Behemoth were more than happy to oblige in this regard as well. Watching the set from a more sedentary position close to the exits (due to my previous troubles of leaving the QMU after a gig), it would be extremely difficult to say that this impacted my enjoyment of their performance in any way. Hoisting a black curtain in front of the stage (as well as having several production buses parked near the university buildings all day) with an echoing track of the children's choir from their latest album playing in the background, it was clear that this set was going to push the production level of the venue to the max. 

Building up to the opening track of  'Wolves Ov Siberia', the curtain fell just when the band were kicking into that frantic intro of the song. The sheer sound here was instantly more tight to my ears than At The Gates, and even from near the back of the room, the blisteringly heavy instruments sounded absolutely huge. Accompanying the scale of the sonics of the band was an equally impressive light show (shout out to all the bands, actually, for having this throughout the night), with a screen set up behind the band showing appropriate changing dark imagery which made the songs pop that little bit more. The use of smoke machines were particularly effective here, with particular blasts of guitars or drums occasionally accentuated with six sets of smoke jets. I imagine due to stage restrictions, the band favoured spark effects rather than what I assume would be the use of fire on a bigger stage set up. This actually worked really well, and similarly built to a sense of theatre and scale that has become associated with Behemoth, particularly on the last couple of albums. It was this material that the band focused on, with much of the set revolving around their last three albums. However, they did play 2 songs each from earlier albums Demigod and Satanica which, from what I could see from the back of the venue, made the pit in the centre of the room go even wilder for. As I've only really gotten into Behemoth from The Satanist onwards, I don't really have that much knowledge of their older material, but they sounded just as huge and (for a lack of a better word) classy as their newer material. I really think I need to go back through their discography after seeing them play these songs. Just as this was looking like it would be a technically flawless gig from the band, Behemoth went to play 'Lucifer', the second last song on their set. Upon opening this song, the sound from the guitars instantly was dialled down, and like with At The Gates, the stage then prematurely emptied for the second time that evening. Cue another five minutes of waiting before the band came back on stage. Not to play however, but to bow out of their last show of the tour two songs early. Again, it seemed like there was another fire alarm that had went off, no doubt due to the smoke machines that were in full use throughout the show. By this point, many people were deciding to leave, which put a bit of a dampener on an otherwise superb headline show from Behemoth. 

I can really see why the QMU doesn't hold that many gigs, as the organisation and response to this was really quite appalling. Overall, these two incidents further made me confused as to why this show was booked here when it seemed to be held in larger venues across the rest of the tour. The bands themselves put on a great show and handled the situation as best as they could considering the show was evidently too big and complex for the QMU to handle. Regardless of the sound issues though, I still really enjoyed this gig as they all put on a hell of show, which any fan of both extreme and more theatrical metal would have been daft to miss out on. This fact alone though, goes to show how special Behemoth are, as the thought of a blackened death metal being able to logistically headline a venue like the Barrowlands or the O2 Academy would have been unthinkable at the turn of the decade. This band are really onto something at the moment, and I would love to see them play even more visually engaging shows in the near future. Just avoid the QMU, yeah? Sigh...

If you want to check out some of the footage from that night, I took a few videos of Behemoth's set, that you can watch below.