Caliban at Relentless Garage

Photos by Warren Zanin

Caliban, along with tour headliners Emmure, led a full metal assault on a handful of wildly devoted fans at the Relentless Garage in London tonight. The hardcore metallers from Germany played to a rather sparse crowd, most likely owing to poor tour promotion, but wrecked havoc nonetheless.

Vocalist Andreas Dörner’s beast of a voice put fans in a manic mood and the singer’s animated gesticulations so aptly reflect the aggression and intensity of his lyrics. New album Say Hello To Tragedy explores some dark (and tragic) topics inspired by Dörner’s personal experiences as well as the real life drama of the Josef Fritzle case. The album reflects an anger provoked by an unjustified evil that encompasses our world today and reflects on the sad reality of how, in many cases, tragedies could have been prevented. And there is no better place to thrash out anger and frustration than at a live metal show – for both fans and band.

Opening with the ambiguous angst of Lovesong, the band includes 24 Years, No One Is Safe and Caliban’s Revenge – from the new album, in this evening’s setlist. Aptly, No One is Safe heralds the perfect opportunity for a wall of death, as commanded by Dörner who bellows over the mic “We do our best here on stage; you do your best in the pit.” Older favourites including My Time Has Come, I Will Never Let You Down, Revenge, Together Alone, Forsaken Horizon and It’s Our Burden To Bleed reflect the melodic tones in the band’s sound and the crisp clarity of guitarist/singer Denis Schmidt’s vocals leave hairs standing on end. As a short interlude, band members and fans send Schmidt birthday wishes on this, his special day, as Dörner leads the crowd in the Happy Birthday chorus. And five seconds later it’s back to metal with Caliban’s Revenge.

Caliban ends a raucous evening with It’s Our Burden To Bleed and ecstatic fans head to the back to check out the awesome band merch and hang around in the hope of meeting their favourite musos.

Keep a look out on ClinkMusicMagazine for our exclusive interview with Caliban.

Check out review on ClinkMusicMagazine

Tags: Andreas Dörner, Caliban, Relentless Garage, Say Hello To Tragedy