I'd been meaning to give my thoughts on the Halo Effect gig I was at last week, but Storm Éowyn decided to deprive me of electricity for three days, so I wasn't able to, and didn't get round to once the power came back. Long story short, it was excellent. Both support acts were enjoyable. I'd say Bloodred Hourglass were stylistically more my thing, being more of a melodic death metal band, but Pain were definitely more fun/polished and had a clearer sound. At first I was a little worried that it was the sound in the venue, because Bloodred Hourglass sounded like a wall of noise and it was quite difficult to discern the pitch of the melodies a lot of the time. When THE came on, that fear was dispelled instantly, the melodies were crystal clear. There really is nothing quite like hearing that Gothenburg twin guitar sound being created right in front of you, it just envelops you and cuts through you.
From a performance standpoint, I have zero complaints. They were flawless and engaging. Mikael comes across as such a nice dude who really loves what he does, they all seemed very appreciative of the audience and impressed at the reception they were receiving. Setlist-wise, they played about half of MotU and 3/4 of DotL, which I guess is a sensible approach if you have two albums, although I certainly wouldn't have minded if it was more MotU-heavy. The one thing I would say is that I would have preferred if they'd played the other half of MotU, at least in terms of album tracks. I'm totally behind them playing Detonate and the title track, but I'd have preferred Conspire to Deceive, Our Channel to the Darkness, Between Directions, Forever Astray, A Death that Becomes Us and especially The Burning Point, which is the best song on the album. I'm also a tiny wee bit sad that of all the songs on DotL, they chose to drop The Most Alone, which might not be the best complete song on that record, but for my money, its solo is the best, most quintessentially Gothenburg MDM moment on the whole album.
The setlist qualms are really just nitpicks, the songs they did play were fantastic and they played the hell out of them, the whole vibe was joyous. Well worth the price of admission, would see again in a heartbeat.
