‘So What?’ was released in March of this year after four singles and a behind the scenes rockumentary. While the band has their own label, Sleep Brothers, they are releasing this latest album in conjunction with American metal masters Spinefarm Records. This is the label behind acts like Bullet For My Valentine, Children of Bodom, Nightwish, Rammstein, etc., which should ensure this latest record reaches as many future fans as possible.
The set kicks off with rapid fire songs You Are We, Anti-Social and Brainwashed to get the crowd moving. If you’re not familiar with While She Sleeps’ sound it might be described as uplifting punk metal. Formed in Sheffield, UK just over a decade ago and winning Best Newcomer at the Kerrang! Awards in 2012. Since then, they’ve kept the same line-up throughout and continued from strength to strength. What better way to continue showcasing their talent to the world than at Resurrection Fest 2019 where they’re playing on the exact same stage that one of their influences, Slipknot, play on later tonight!
Before we move onto Civil Isolation, singer and guitarist Mat Welsh has a special thank you; one for the crowd and another one for Bleed From Within singer Scott Kennedy who has stepped in on short notice for singer Loz Taylor who has had to depart the tour. Loz Taylor and the band announced on July 1st that he wouldn’t be completing the rest of the tour for personal reasons but the band insisted that the show must go on.
For a guy who has just learned another band’s work to perform in front of thousands of people Scott Kennedy has done amazingly well and dare I say the crowd don’t seem to mind missing out on seeing Loz all that much! Kennedy has stepped up to the plate here big time and nailed his performance which deserves an awful lot of credit. Not only were Kennedy’s vocals great but Mat Welsh was as well, screaming every part with passion.
While She Sleeps are full of energy now and whipping the crowd into a circle pit frenzy with crowd surfers raining over the barriers. Then, everything slows down a bit for Four Walls but it doesn’t stay slow for long and the tempo ramps right back up again. The band close out their set with Silence Speaks and Hurricane both from 2017’s ‘You Are We’.
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PoM: Here’s a chance for you to tell our readers about your new album Wolftales. But could you please start off by introducing the readers to Let Them Fall?
LTF: Hi everybody and thanks for this opportunity you gave to us! Sure thing, Let Them Fall is a metalcore project born in 2012 and based in Grosseto (Italy). The line up is Rita D’aniello (Vocals), Gabriele Catoni (Guitar/Vocals), Mattia Detti (Guitar), Mario Spatuzzi (Bass) and Marco Manus (Drums).
PoM: And now onto Wolftales… track-by-track, what inspired you, what topics are you dealing with, what do you want to express with this song etc.
01. The Wolf
LTF: It’s our live intro too and it works very well, introducing our set to the audience and creating a vibe that sounds a lot like the beginning of a battle in a movie.
02. Mjolnir
LFT: Mjolnir is one of the heaviest songs of the album. During his composition we wanted to add some melodic hc vibes in it.
03. Fenrir
LTF: Also called “The one with that catchy chorus”! It’s the first song we wrote in “Wolftales”, it came out as a single more than one year ago. It was the first experiment with the new sound that we’ve been shaped for the last months and that ended up with the release of this first album.
04. Jormund
LTF: This track is a twist in Let Them Fall’s usual style. It mantains the same structure of other songs but it brings darker and creepy vibes.
05. Wintersun
LTF: Wintersun is the 2nd single came out before the release of “Wolftales”. It’s surely the first love song we’ve ever written and we used elements like piano and violins to create an emotive and deeper atmosphere.
06. The Tales
LTF: When we wrote down an hypothetical list of ideas for the new album we said “We need a kickass interlude”. This instrumental track is deeply influenced by post-rock and we tried to achieve that kind of ambient sound that characterizes the genre.
07. Midgard
LTF: Well, if you’re wondering which song most represents Let Them Fall as a band, it’s absolutely Midgard. You can find a perfect mix of everything we’ve ever loved to place in our songs in terms of riffing and composition.
08. Skoll
LTF: The most appropriate adjective to define this song is probably “messy”. We just needed to not follow a proper structure for once and we obtained Skoll.
09. Wildfire
LTF: Almost every metalcore album has a ballad, and ours is Wildfire. In this one we used a lot of clean tones and orchestral elements, and it’s plenty of clean singing parts.
10. Gathering
LTF: The last track of our record. In this track we resumed all of the thematics and characters that we introduced in the previous lyrics.
PoM: How was your first “real” studio recording experience?
LTF: We tracked our first EP in 2012 and that was our first recording experience. We were obviously more inexpert but it is satisfying to see how much we’ve grown during the years.
PoM: Could you please tell us a bit about the artwork – who made it, what’s the concept behind it etc. and how important do you feel it is to have a cool artwork?
LTF: The artwork of Wolftales is a piece of art made by Moonlover – Visual Arts. For this record we wanted a cover that could immediately drag our fans into the Let Them Fall’s concept, we think that a good artwork is fundamental to convince someone to give you a chance.
PoM: This is your debut on the metalcore scene under the banner of Let Them Fall. What are your own feelings on the reactions already received?
LTF: We’re very proud of what we’ve achieved in this first months after the release of our album. The shows has been awesome and we’re receiving a lot of support and love from all around the world.
PoM: Who and what has inspired you musically on this album?
LTF: In general we feel deeply influenced by the passion that we all share for the fantasy genre and the movie themes but regarding our style and riffing we can find a lot of similarities with bands like While She Sleeps or The Ghost Insid
PoM: The song titles, art cover and your videos are heavily influenced by the Nordic mythology, how is that?
LTF: As we said we get inspiration by our passions of everyday life. Northern mythology has been a concept that we wanted to propose in order to add a particular connotation to Wolftales, but we do not actually directly talk about that in our lyrics
PoM: Any tracks meaning something special for you on the album?
LTF: There’s with no doubt one song in this album that means a lot to us: Midgard is a sort of tribute to our story as a band in which we tried to communicate all the values that guided us through these years spent together traveling and bringing our music to people.
PoM: What’s next on your list, any tours or gigs planned outside the borders of your homeland Italy, maybe say hello to little Denmark?
LTF: For the time being we’re trying to promote Wolftales on the internet and playing a release tour here in Italy, thanks to the help of our family in Antigony Records/Antigony Agency. In the near future we’re sure that we’ll be space for and European tour and for new releases linked to this record (maybe a deluxe edition or a reimagined version). It would be a dream to come to Denmark, we’ll try our best to make it.
PoM: Thank you very much for answering my questions. Do you have any last rants for our fellow readers?
LTF: We want to thank you again for giving us a chance and everyone who will read this, your support is what keeps alive our flame. Keep following us cause we’ll share some news very soon.
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DAY I
The past few months have been quite a ride in terms of the billing for this year’s metal festival in Aalborg in the north of Denmark. The first name to be announced was none other than Morbid Angel. The Trey Azagthot/Steve Tucker version of the band, naturally. I saw that constellation back in the nineties. It wasn’t my favourite, truth be told, but I could easily live with it. Then that got cancelled.
After that, My Dying Bride were announced as one of the headliners. I was completely in awe. My top doom band of all time!
Then they got cancelled, too. I was devastated. Instead, Dark Funeral were introduced. Bummer. I was not at all amused!
As a comfort, I Am Morbid were added to the bill, and that I could certainly not complain about.
But first, the opening day, or should I say evening, which is dominated by metalcore and the headliner, Danish cult act Invocator, fronted by none other that one of the grand, old men of the Danish metal scene, Volbeat producer, guitarist and singer Jacob Hansen.
I arrive more or less in the middle of the set of the opening band, ROAD TO JERUSALEM. This is in a way something you could call a supergroup in the sense that the band consists of the former The Haunted and Invocator drummer Per M. Jensen, Soilwork/Hypocrisy/Scar Symmetry bassist Andreas Holma, Konkhra guitarist Michael Skovbakke and singer Josh Tyree.
This is probably less hard hitting music than you’d expect from people with these portfolios. Road To Jerusalem’s music is heavy, agreed, but also very melodic. From the few songs I get to hear, it sounds like well-played hardrock. It’s alright, but, to be honest, nothing special.
LIVLØS means ‘lifeless’ in Danish. If there’s something this young band isn’t then it is indeed lifeless! In particular front man Simon is a bundle of energy who gives it all. He is all over the place; in the photo pit, leaning into the audience over the barrier, growling his way through the half-hour set like a madman. Great to see a Danish band who doesn’t just have the ambition to be good metal musicians, but also to give the audience value for money in terms of entertainment. There’s no holding back on the aggression here, that’s for sure. Note: First Wall of Death of the festival!
Australian CURSED EARTH’s front woman, Jazmine, claims that this is the craziest thing she’s done. Whether she talks about going on a tour of Europe with Novelists and Make Them Suffer or merely standing on a stage in Denmark where we’re close to zero degrees outside, I don’t know. But fact is that this cute looking little woman tears the stage up with her brutal voice and animated stage act.
Cursed Earth’s music is kind of metalcore mixed with a djent bass sound, and I’m wondering if this is a trend of sorts, because the next two bands also employ that sound. More about that later. The Australians with Jazmine Luders in front leave a very fine impression, even if I’m not totally a fan of the genre.
NOVELISTS hail from France and their sound isn’t a far cry from that of Cursed Earth. Their stage act is different, though. Less insisting and in your face, although singer Matt also jumps into the photo pit. He spends much time kind of…well, dancing around the stage in a way that is, to say it the least, not very heavy metal.
Given the fact that this is the second band in a row who play metalcore, and even if it’s varied with clean vocals, I start getting bored. The same emotional state is true for the majority of the Aalborg Metal Festival audience.
It’s Thursday evening, a lot of people have been to work all day and to go to work again tomorrow, and they’re holding back. There is also the possibility that metalcore simply isn’t that popular here.
MAKE THEM SUFFER, yet another band from Perth, Australia, also experience that there is little energy in the audience (or genuine interest); the response isn’t powerful, even if tonight’s third metalcore band are cool and professional and everything. We have just reached a point where we want to see Invocator for old times’ sake and then go to bed.
INVOCATOR represent total nostalgia for a lot of Danes, myself included. The first time I saw the band was in 1990. Jacob Hansen happens to be the only remaining member from that time. Back then, they had released two demo tapes (yes, tapes), and were the hotshots of the underground. When the debut album, Excursion Demise, came out in 1991, it was something a lot of people had been waiting for, and it was good, but nowhere near as good as the next two albums, Weave the Apocalypse (1994) and Dying to Live (1995), two true classics within the genre of technical thrash metal. A fourth album, Through the Flesh to the Soul, was released in 2003, a fine album, however not quite as memorable as the two previous albums.
Although marred by the lacklustre response from this Thursday night crowd, Invocator pull off a gig, which in my eyes is something Hansen and his stage buddies can be more than pleased with. The line-up beyond Hansen is guitarist Perle Hansen (who played guitar on Weave the Apocalypse and Dying to Live), drummer Jakob Grundel (who also played drums on the last album) and Raunchy bassist Jesper Kvist.
As it has been the case with Invocator since the mid-nineties, there is no big fuss, and certainly no metalcore fury and jumping around. It’s a modest and slightly shy performance, yet a self-confident performance. These people know that they can play their instruments, let me put it like that.
I’m tempted to say that I haven’t heard Invocator with a better and heavier sound before, and that is no trivial claim. They sound really, really good tonight, and the set list is excellent. All albums are represented with at least one tune, and, needless to say, there are some pretty damned amazing songs among them.
Thus ends the first evening of Aalborg Metal Festival 2017. A bit slow in terms of the audience response, but as always excellent sound and a friendly atmosphere. Time for some sleep and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.
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