Flaming recommendations

The year has only begun yet great new music is already emerging.
I have had the enormous pleasure of reviewing the debut album of British metalcore rockers The Eyes Of A Traitor and have since "A Clear Perception" landed in my post box hardly been able to stop listening to it. On ther MySpace page, the band is counting down the days, minutes and seconds to their album release. If I were you I would do the same.



Swedish Marionette today begin their UK tour. I spoke to singer Axel who despite having been warned about “bad attitudes” and “low standards” in the good old monarchy is more than a bit thrilled about it all:

Axel: We are extremely stoked about coming to England to play. We have sold quite well over there and have also had some pretty good press so we are hoping for big crowds. It’s a pretty short tour, but we will also have time for a gig in the Netherlands and with a bit of luck hopefully one in France too. We are also very much looking forward to meeting other up and coming bands.

NF: When you go touring, do you have time to do some sightseeing as well? (I can of course recommend a trip to my old university town Sheffield…)

A: Thanks for the tip! During our German tour we took it pretty easy and tried to rest as much as possible. The UK tour is a lot shorter so it’s possible that we’ll do some more traditional sightseeing this time. The most important thing is of course to keep body and spirit hungry for the actual gigs.

Check out their Myspace for dates.

Rocking response

My MySpace inbox excites makes me greatly.

Without revealing too much I can only advise you to keep checking in on Nordic Flames for an exclusive interview with an insanely hot and frequently MTV-featured new band very soon!

Another nice surprise was the email from Marionette-Aron, thanking for the review and saying how good it felt that someone appreciated what they were trying to do:
"This is why you rock hard even though there are only six people watching, because if, when you leave, one person liked it, that makes it worth it."
Now that's what it's all about!

Lucky inhabitants of the UK and Norway, you can go and watch these Swedes tear the walls down in Oslo on the 29th of November, in Newcastle on the 17th of January and in Birmingham on the 19th. On the 20th and the 21st Bristol and London won't know what hit them.

Live Nation Sweden at Roter Salon, Popkomm Berlin 9/10/2008

Zeigeist, Juvelen, Apollo Drive and Marionette

Barrier breaking Marionette headline an evening in Berlin dedicated to Swedish electro bands, end up playing in front of five people and yet manage to greatly impress yours truly.

When Live Nation Sweden arranged this evening I suspect their idea was to show off up and coming Swedish music export in the electro-orientated Hauptstadt. Only something went wrong. The whole evening felt a bit like a business party full of Swedish thirty-forty-somethings scratching each others backs, telling themselves how great they are. The true Germans were few, far apart and not looking too impressed.

Here’s what the evening sounded like:

Theatrical disco duo Zeitgeist gives us swinging electro, cool vocals and impressive choreography. It is refreshing and fun to see a so well thought trough show. Although I suspect that the crashed lamp due to a badly aimed party popper was not part of it.

Juvelen, a trio with some kind of Swedish The Strokes-look going in, deliver falsetto song on top of lounge music –something which lasts for about 30 seconds. Not 30, excuse the language, fucking minutes. I fell asleep and the people who were swaying along to the way over-hyped monotonous sound looked like they were faking it just to look cool. Juck.

Apollo Drive play a short set of Bon Jovi-smelling rock n’ roll. The singer has a great voice and something tells me this band will do well at European dance parties aimed at an older crowd with low standards and eighties nostalgia.

After this to me rather disappointing showcase of Northern music, most business people and what few others there were seem to have left the building. By the time Marionette go on stage there are 20 paying people left in the place. And by the time they leave there are 6.
I just don’t know how someone was thinking when they put the programme together but I do know that these guys deserved a much larger crowd.
Well, I guess the people who were left after Juvelen & co were expecting something as lame as what they had seen up until then. But that’s not what they got.

The fact that there was hardly anyone there did not stop the sextet from Gothenburg from delivering a set suited for stadiums.
It is a great shame that not more people got to enjoy this gig and I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for the guys. (Just getting ready for the show, with all the make up and hairspray that would have required, must have taken a lot of effort.) But it is clear that these guys enjoy what they do and that stardom has not gotten the best of them, even more so when singer Axel tells us “you may not believe us but we are actually having a really good time up here”.

And somehow, for Marionette to play in an old theatre in the ruins of a disco party felt just right. With the vain disco glitter stomped to the ground under our feet they delivered songs about fire, hell and revenge and to me and my four German fan friends it made more sense than ever.