Rockfreaks.net

support Fange + Kollapse
author AP date 06/10/23 venue Underwerket, Copenhagen, DEN

It has been a while since I last went to a proper basement show, and the return of the Canadian noise metal outfit KEN mode to Denmark for the first time since 2015 was the perfect opportunity to do exactly that. Having been impressed with the band’s efforts at the now-defunct KB18 that year, it seems to me that the even more intimate confines of Underwerket offers an ideal setting for their intense and emotionally riveting music that has only grown better on each consecutive release since their 2015 album “Success”. All is thus in place for a superb Friday night, beginning with an opening set by the Danish post-metal trio Kollapse, who have traveled from relatively afar to play for us. Recognising this, people have showed up in good time in order to ensure their efforts will not be spilled on a lacklustre crowd.

Kollapse

The sound of something dense and heavy striking metal reverberates through the venue, as the three musicians take their positions. This auditory prelude, like the tolling of a bell that warns of imminent danger, conjures a foreboding atmosphere for the 33 minutes of sludgy post-metal to which we are about to be subjected, courtesy of Kollapse. The two frontmen, their pained faces inches apart, trade harsh growls as though they were in dialogue, expelling their inner demons and baring their emotions over a soundscape in which the guitar, bass, drums and vocals all have their own voice and narrative by virtue of a perfectly balanced sound mix. The combination of loud, abrasive riffs and sinuous melodies with drumming that, at times, borders on dissonant, creates a suffocating pandemonium of sound, albeit one that is deftly counterbalanced by eerie, ambient passages like in the end of the second track. Clutching his microphone with both hands, during this part the bassist is swaying back and forth with his eyes shut in a moment of unfiltered emotion and immersion, before the monolithic “Drift” off the band’s 2021 album “Sult” is unleashed. Adding a layer of mysticism to the already dense and enigmatic soundscape, the haunting spoken word by Majken Roswalld Portefée Lex on its backing track, and the seamless transitions between corrosive sludge riffage and ambient sections, both play their part in rendering it into a highlight of the concert, with both the guitarist and the bassist personifying the music through violent movements.

Another standout moment comes with the final piece on setlist, the towering crescendo of which sounds like an impending cataclysm — an impression strengthened by the guitarist’s decision to lay his instrument face down on the floor so as to generate a screeching wall of feedback for the song’s final breaths. Just on the aforementioned “Sult” album, not everything on Kollapse’s setlist tonight strikes such a strong chord with me, but the excellent sound mix and the group’s full immersion in their performance art nonetheless renders it into a captivating show far beyond their disappointing appearance at the 2022 edition of A Colossal Weekend where I last saw them live.

Fange

Fange turns out to be a somewhat odd prospect in that there is no drummer in the line-up of this French industrial sludge metal quartet. Instead, the band utilises synthesised drums reminiscent of Author & Punisher percussing on a backing track, which in turn leaves ample room, even in a venue as tiny as Underwerket, for vocalist Matthias Jungbluth, guitarists Benjamin Moreau and Titouan le Gal, and bassist Antoine Perron to unfold themselves. Indeed, Jungbluth in particular is a true menace, a blur of frenetic movement as he stomps the floor, headbangs with maniacal intensity, and throws himself around the stage as if possessed by some force of the netherworld in the first two songs, “Total Serpent” off 2020’s “Pudeur” and “À La Racine” off their latest album “Privation”. The veins on his shaven head look like they might pop with each savaging growl he spits out, an aesthetic mirrored by Perron as he takes every opportunity in between his pugilistic pick strokes to brutishly kick the air.

Fange have an aggressive, unhinged vibe about them, and their hardcore punk energy seems to make an instant impression on the audience, even if a moshpit ever materialises to channel the band’s kinetic fury. This is perhaps due to the fact that once the first blow of their shock-and-awe live tactics has been weathered, Fange’s music is soon revealed to largely adhere to a pretty repetitive formula: subdued passages with vocals that verge on spoken word, followed by explosive, chugging segments full of screams and dense riffage, rinse and repeat. So while the initial promise of Fange’s performance was unmistakable, once “Enfers Inoculés” has brought their onslaught to its conclusion, the rather limited scope of the group’s sonic palette becomes evident and leaves a lingering sense of unfulfilled potential. Given the full commitment and conviction of all four musicians, one can only hope that the band might explore greater depths in the future, adding more shades and facets to their songs in order to increase their dimensionality both in the live setting and otherwise.

KEN mode

“Turn, err… us off, please!", requests KEN mode’s keyboardist and saxophonist Kathryn Kerr in bemusement, as one of their songs is still playing from the venue’s sound system despite the quartet’s being ready to begin their concert. “Wow — that’s a strange way to start a set", remarks an equally perplexed frontman Jesse Matthewson, before kicking the show off with “A Love Letter” from the band’s 2022 album “NULL”. Kerr’s saxophone injects a chaotic and off-kilter quality into the song, with Matthewson amplifying its unhinged nature by demonstratively pointing at a different member of the audience for each refrain of “I’d like to congratulate you!” This track captures the raving, ranting style of Daughters and to a degree also Ashenspire in music that, at times, tempts me to describe it as ‘dissonant noise-jazz’, and appropriately, it is accompanied by an intense and confrontational performance by Matthewson, Kerr, and bassist Skot Hamilton. Indeed, the evolution that KEN mode has undergone during the last eight years is hard to overstate, with tracks like “The Illusion of Dignity” off the group’s 2018 offering “Loved” underscoring not only the depth that Kerr’s keys, effects, and feverish sax soliloquies contribute to their music, but also their unique penchant for discovering melody within the abrasive and the atonal. It no longer plays like a solid take on noise metal — it now feels like vivid hallucinations rendered into sound.

The concert reaches a zenith with “Lost Grip”, which sends the entire band into the throes of passion, consumed by its intense whirlwind of gripe. “I don’t believe that you mean well!”, Matthewson lividly complains, lamenting the apparent indifference that many people show toward their surroundings, concluding that “We deserve this!" in a phenomenal moment that leaves the crowd feeling just as indignant as he does. Quite appropriately, the subsequent “Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Should” ups the pace and ante, introducing a touch of old school screamo into the band’s noisy aesthetic, before Matthewson swaps his axe for a bass guitar so as to deliver a double bass onslaught in “Blessed” off 2015’s “Success”. It is a transition which highlights the quartet’s versatility as musicians, something that is even more obvious during the last two songs, “Feathers & Lips” and “No Gentle Art”, both of which produce true cacophonies of calculated noise. In the latter, Matthewson is left screaming “Stop giving me hope!" as Kerr blasts out maddening sax melodies that seem to grow increasingly, deliberately out of tune ash the song approaches its climax near the end. It is a perfectly deranged finale for a riveting concert, one you should regret to have missed.

Setlist:

• 1. A Love Letter
• 2. The Shrike
• 3. The Illusion of Dignity
• 4. Painless
• 5. Lost Grip
• 6. Doesn’t Feel Pain Like He Should
• 7. Blessed
• 8. Feathers & Lips
• 9. No Gentle Art