Invocator, Raunchy & The Burning (11/9-2010)

On the ninth of September 2010, The Headbanger's Ball Tour hit Lille Vega in Copenhagen, this year featuring The Burning, Raunchy and Invocator.

Being a big Invocator fan, and not having seen them perform live since some time back in the 90s, when they served as support act for Paradise Lost at a show in Odense, I decided to go to the Headbanger's Ball Tour show in Vega to check them out. Admittedly, I was not very interested in neither The Burning nor Raunchy (truth be told, I hadn't heard Raunchy before and I'd never even heard about The Burning.

I arrived half an hour after the show had started, so I managed to catch half of The Burning's show. Their style was a heavy and groovy, yet thrash- and metalcore-inspired type of metal music, and their stage presence was fittingly intense - and at times it reminded me of a hybrid between Grope's early groove metal style and The Psyke Project's heavy and sludgy metalcore style. As a bonus, S�ren Nico Adamsen from Artillery had a guest appearance on one of The Burning's tracks, being heralded by The Burning's Johnny Haven as the best smelling man in metal. After The Burning's intense performance, Raunchy, billed as co-headliners, to to the stage, which just about offered enough room for their six-man line-up. Raunchy's modern melodic metalcore style obviously appealed a lot to the younger generation of metalheads, and the place was jam packed while they delivered their professional and also sympathetic, as the band members, without hesitation, handed water out to the dehydrated teenagers up front. Being old school, I kind of lost interest in Raunchy's show (Raunchy's style belongs to the same genre of metal as Dead By April and Sonic Syndicate, but Raunchy are much more true to their rock and metal roots (and much better!), retaining a lot of heaviness and aggression in their otherwise melodic music) halfway through the show, so I decided to go downstairs and buy some Invocator merchandise.

With all due respect, The Burning and Raunchy are very good live bands and good musicians, and they delivered hell of a show - even I, who do not really like the sort of music they play, can see that - but when Invocator took to the stage, the crowd experienced much higher level of intensity, technicality and musicianship. Invocator's music is much heavier and much more complex than Raunchy's and The Burning's style, and their stage presence, while extremely laid back, was much more energetic and intense. A lot of the younger audience, who are more into Raunchy's and The Burning's modern styles of metal, left during Invocator's show, leaving behind a more mature audience, diminished in size but with increased appreciation of what was going on onstage. With Perle back in the band, most of the set consisted of tracks from the legendary "Weave the Apocalypse" and "Living to Die", all of which hit the jackpot with the crowd; there is just something unique about their music and about actually witnessing such technical, yet groovy (Invocator were one of the first Danish metal bands to incorporate groove into their thrash metal music, probably inspired by Pantera), metal being performed live. The band performed the title track off "Through the Flesh to the Soul" with a guest appearance by Flemming C. Lund (former member, now in Raunchy) on guitars, and as part of their encore, they played "the title track of "Excursion Demise" with a guest performance by former guitarist Jacob Schulz, whose shreddy solos were in an interesting contrast with Perle's much more technical and rock-inspired solos.

In all, a good show with something for both the kids and the old school metalheads of my generation. Invocator's performance was exceptional. The show was apparently also an important wvent in the Copenhagen metal milieu, as I spotted members of several established metal acts in the audience, including one of the St�tzer brothers and, I think, one of the members of Pretty Maids.







See more photos on Jacob Schulz's Facebook profile here.

I don't know how permanent it is. I know that Perle also plays in a rock 'n' roll band (they rehearse in the room just next to our rehearsal room), and Jacob is in Anubis Gate and is also busy with all his producing. But, I agree with you, some new 90s-style tech-thrash from Invocator would be really nice. I seem to remember having read somewhere that Jacob has written a couple of new tracks, so we might be in luck.

One of the things that I appreciate about the latest album is that there are more uptempo polka beat parts than on the 90s ones.

I would have liked it if they played more than just one track off "Excursion Demise" by the way.

If you�re playing leads on the album, we want it

thrashy wrote: But whar the future brings is not to tell, i dont even know if people want a new album with Invocator.

I want one!!!!!