It was a freezing night in Fremantle, but that didn’t deter the black-clad crowd waiting outside Metro’s for Soilwork – and judging by the number of the band’s t-shirts in attendance, it was a tour that had been long-awaited.
Inside, opening band Atvena’s Wake attempted to warm up the crowd. If first impressions count, this local Perth band’s first was not the greatest – they looked like a high school band, at that age where Mum has just recently given up insisting on regular hair cuts. But when they started to play, it was obvious that this six-piece have something good going for them, with an interesting mash of styles incorporating euro-metal keyboards, old-school guitar riffs and death metal vocals. Bass player Scotty Doig and guitarist Shaun McIlroy are standout musicians, and the songs where Doig supplied additional clean vocals worked really well. Although Atvena’s Wake are inexperienced – on-stage communication between the band members looked awkward, and the flow and timing of the set was all off – they did get a positive response from a portion of the audience; it will be interesting to watch them develop as a band. Singer TJ Sinclair gets an ‘A’ for effort for jumping off stage and singing in the pit not once, but twice.
Having been, at the very least, politely tolerant of the opening act, and after waiting patiently for what seemed like an eternity for the death metallers they had really come to see, the crowd went nuts when dry ice filled the stage, the lights went out, and a recorded voice over introduced the five Swedes walking on stage. Soilwork were last in Australia four years ago, but didn’t make it to Perth – a fact that they apologised for right away. Then it was down to the business of dispensing hearty doses of melodic death metal.
Right from the start the band turned the intensity way up, and didn’t let go throughout the entire set. Vocalist Speed Strid – the only founding member remaining in the band – got the crowd interacting between every song, inciting screams, yells and fists at every opportunity, while guitarists Daniel Antonsson and David Andersson, bass player Ola Flink, drummer Dirk Verbeuren and keyboard player Sven Karlsson showed why virtuosic melodic death metal styling is the almost exclusive domain of their countrymen. The punters directly in front of the stage followed Strid’s instructions to the letter – after all, when a large, bald Swedish man tells you to jump, asking how high is kind of redundant. The mosh pit was hectic but not unnecessarily violent, even when circle pits formed, and there was very little crowd surfing – the audience focusing their attention on the music itself rather than the macho bullshit that goes on at far too many metal shows.
The set list covered most of the standout tracks from Soilwork’s seven album back catalogue, with highlights being the new single Exile, super-fast Basket Case, and set closer Stabbing the Drama. As soon as the lights went out the roar for an encore started – and an interesting audio counterpoint between fans chanting “So-il-work” on one side of the room, with fans chanting “Soil-work” on the other. The band re-appeared and treated everyone to three more numbers, finishing for good with Nerve.
After promising not to wait another four years to return, it was over, and old Soilwork fans joined new Soilwork fans leaving the venue – sweat-soaked but satisfied.
