Concerts I've seen

I'm not much of a fan of Ola Englund's main band, The Haunted. But he comes across well online and I was intrigued to see what his solo output would be like. It's better than The Haunted. Lots of chugging riffs, with some electronic bits thrown in for good measure. Apart from one song which was straight up blues and for me probably the highlight of the set. He's a decent enough guitar player, but there wasn't enough on the songwriting side to maintain my interest.

Like Ola, Bernth and Berthoud are making big waves in the online world, and they've teamed up here to play together in the real world, hence the Escape The Internet tour name. Both are extremely capable players, but for me it was all a bit flat. The guitar vs bass battle and the accompanying dialogue was cringeworthy. Just get on and play the music, don't waste time trying to fake a rivalry that clearly isn't there. And the music itself? Very competently performed, but just not enough bite to it and I found nothing there to pique my interest in any meaningful way. In particular, I was hoping for plenty of shredding from Bernth and it just wasn't there. Bernth's wife came out to sing for a couple of songs and those songs were head and shoulders above the rest of the set.

A year after the death of Magnum guitarist and songwriter Tony Clarkin, Bob decided to do a short run of shows to remember him and the music he wrote, with Tony's long time guitar tech taking over the six string duties. As such, this was effectively a greatest hits show from the band's 50 year career. It was split into two sets with a short break between the two. The first set was good, with notable songs coming in the form of set opener "How far Jerusalem" and "Les morts dansant". If the first set was good, the second was fantastic. "Soldier of the line", "Just like an arrow", "Need a lot of love", "On a storyteller's night", "Kingdom of madness" and "The spirit". Absolutely fantastic. I was slightly suprised we didn't get the standard set closer "Sacred hour", but that didn't detract from a great evening. It was an emotional show, and Bob was in tears at the end. But it was a fitting send off for the band.