UNSUN, BLACK RIVER, VOTUM

On an aesthetic rollercoaster

08.12.2008 Kraków (POL)

"Black Sun Tour 2009" was a small tour through Poland featuring three debuting acts. Three different bands, three different styles of heavy music, that's why I decided to be there...

The first one was a young progressive- metal band VOTUM. Their first full length album "Time Must Have a Stop" released this year via Insanity Records met with a very positive response... I arrived at the venue on time. A few minutes later VOTUM appeared on stage and started their 45-minutes show. I have to admit that was my first contact with their music and I was positively surprised. The show itself turned out really good. Almost perfectly sounded, atmospheric progressive metal clearly inspired by such bands as PORCUPINE TREE, OPETH, THE GATHERING or KATATONIA, based upon prog traditional elements as beautiful lead guitar passages and subtle keyboard's landscapes. Pretty cool clean vocal parts and good technical skills are also worth underlining here. Crowd's reaction to their show was pretty good and the band left the stage to a smattering of applause.

The second group appeared on this tour was a metal-rock combo BLACK RIVER. Their debut effort saw the light of day a few months ago through Mystic Productions, nevertheless BLACK RIVER's members definitely aren't newcomers. Band's line up features such guys as Orion (BEHEMOTH, VESANIA) on bass, Daray (DIMMU BORGIR, ex-VADER) on drums, Taff (ROOTWATER, ex-GONER GEISHA) on vocals, Kay (NEOLITHIC) and Art on guitars. That's why people in Poland used to call BLACK RIVER a super- group. Their show was preceded by a short introduction... from Louis Armstrong's famous classic „What A Beautiful World”. After that, the band entered the stage and started to rock from the very beginning as if they had never done something else. What can I say? It was definitely the ultimate rock-metal show. Pure professionalism, self-confidence perfectly combined with fun and energetic music... people went crazy. Taff once again proven himself to be not only a great frontman, but also the best vocalist in Polish metal history. His wit and charisma had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand. After 45 minutes of stoner metal madness BLACK RIVER left the stage which only resulted in much louder applause as fans waited for an encore. After a minute the guys came back and played „Punky Blonde” and „Free Man” once again. Enough to be satisfied. Looking at people's happy smiling faces they could not ask for more.

OK, the third name in the package was a new full time band of ex- VADER's guitarist Mauser. As you might know, he founded UNSUN together with his wife Aya (vocals) some time ago. Band's line up features also Heinrich (VESANIA) on bass and Vaaver (INDUKTI) on drums. Their debut album „The End Of Life” was released via Century Media a few months ago. That's also why UNSUN were supposed to be the highlight of Black Sun Tour. Unfortunately, the band turned out to be the biggest disappointment (of the night and the whole tour actually). I cannot say anything bad about Mauser (guitar), Heinrich (bass) and Vaaver (drums). They are professional musicians. But the show was completely ruined by female vocalist Aya. I don’t really want to go into the details. OK, she’s attractive. A nice person. But her vocal parts were just horrible. This is a fact- in live situations Aya can't sing. Her utter lack of stage experience really doesn't matter here. She just can't sing. She can't control her vocal lines. Too bad she went on the tour without any serious preparation. For the future I suggest to Mauser to invest some money in singing lessons for Aya. I'm sorry to say that her performance in Kraków could be described just with one word: ayayayayay! And the rest is silence...