It’s the start of October so it must be ProgPower Europe. It’s the time of year when lovers of all types of progressive music and indeed all types of rock and metal descend upon the normally sleepy village of Baarlo in the Limburg region of Holland. This year it was slightly different as the event started as day early in honour of Mikko Laine who was killed in a tragic accident at the end of last year’s weekend of music and festivities. A group of festival goers and locals gathered to pay a quiet tribute to the former Sole Remedy guitarist.

Musical proceedings started with a free tribute concert by Persefone from Andorra. Small country, big sound. I own their 2007 album “Core” and was interested in how they were going to bring to the stage their all-embracing progressive metal with smatterings of Dimmu Borgir. Kicking off at 10.30pm, the stage of the low-ceilinged bar of the JC Sjiwa club was set. The 6 gentleman looked and played as if they meant business. There was no Dimmu Borgir in there now. Intricate and rampant passages combined with deathly screams from the vocalist. Persefone went on to play much of their 2009 album “Shin-Ken”. Difficult section followed after difficult section. I can’t say I knew where it was going and it came out as a bit of a mess at times, not helped by the sound quality in the club. Nevertheless most of the crowd appreciated the music and the band’s evident energy and enthusiasm. The highlight for me was an extremely original metal version of the Star Wars theme, Persefone style – great fun. I did speak to the band’s leader afterwards and he told me that the difficult style is deliberate and arises from the band following their instincts, so well done to them for not just trying to please the crowd, who as de facto lovers of progressive music, were satisfied anyway. Not perfect, but mission achieved, I’d say.

And so to Friday. Because of the extra show, most of Friday was free. I hired a bicycle at the castle where we stay, and went out in search of a hill. I didn’t find one. Nice countryside though, with the river Maas splitting the fields and villages. When I arrived back, there was a lone and melancholic Finnish festival goer sitting in the wind and blustery rain, surrounded by the majestic splendour of the Kasteel de Berckt. It was like the inspiration for a song. He explained that he missed breakfast, having partied until late, and he was now out of beer after 20 or so people joined the party and used up the supply. This is ProgPower.

“Weird Opeth” was how one of my fellow spectators described Ørkenkjøtt, the first band to play on Friday evening. What I heard to start with was jungle drums. What I saw was a large Jesus lookalike Norwegian singing in his own language and wearing a cross between a flowing robe and pyjamas, while other band members wore eye paint and glitter. There was something hippie and hypnotic about this. It was powerful and I liked the fact that they took time to entrance us, a trend which continued through the set. 10 minutes in, the deep prog became rock and roll as the band went mental. The following song, which like everything was from the band’s album “Ønskediktet”, was then steady but unspectacular, but it did feature another mood change mid-way through. “Before we started experimenting, we were a metal band” explained the band’s spokesman. To prove it, some hard rock / metal followed but not without an Opeth type visit into dreamland. A sampled intro sounded like a Malay rallying speech and I was expecting a metal Buddhist chant to burst through at one point but there was a lot of conventional metal which left me cold. A break was the cue for the singer to come out dressed and speaking like a redneck with a Texan drawl. A metal riot followed, the singer was on the floor screaming through a megaphone, a guitarist started humping him and the other guitarist and bassist finished up on the floor as well. The music was all over the place but Ørkenkjøtt were without doubt good entertainment value.

Anubis Gate are the kind of band which first brought me to ProgPower Europe in 2006. Then it was their fellow Danes Mercenary, with whom Anubis Gate has links. Easy on the ear and with interesting flow patterns in their recorded work, this was a band I looked forward to. I was not disappointed. Anubis Gate exceeded my expectations. Once the sound had settled down, the band proceeded to take the place apart with their brand of melodic heavy metal. There is a formula to their music: a heavy wall of sound, a frequent bam-ba-ba-bam-ba-ba-bam-bam-bam driving the Anubis Gate train forward, and well constructed songs. The performance was tight and the vocalist gave presence to the songs. A number of them tonight were off this year’s self-titled album. “Golden Days” is typically commercial and unlike the other songs, has a cheesy side. Above all it demonstrated the band’s instinct for a killer song structure. Some material was played from earlier works, and while the thunderous and compelling rhythms were recognisably present, I sensed a reduction in complexity and embellishments over the intervening years. The powerful delivery overcame an apparent nervousness on the part of the singer / bass player and one of the guitarists. I learned afterwards that Anubis Gate hadn’t toured since 2009, which might explain it. The other guitarist however seemed entirely at home, reflecting the joyous mood through his body language and playing. For me, this set could have gone on all night, but it came to an end with “Options – Going Nowhere”, another power-packed adventure with a shadowy build-up, sharp vocals, catchiness and of course that compulsive rhythm. I knew about Anubis Gate before ProgPower but hadn’t realised how good they are. I was glowing as I left the room.

Friday’s headlining act was Heaven’s Cry from Canada. This evening marked the release of only their third album since 1996. My expectation was of highly technical prog, and this is what we got. The sound was big and on occasions dark, but it was easy to absorb these large chunks of progressiveness. The singer’s voice was good and typical of the genre, clear but never whiny. The patterns were interesting but for all the technical quality there was something missing. The band and the music lacked identity. As the set continued, I had the strong feeling that nothing was going to happen, even though I was mildly enjoying the songs. It was like being served up a nice turkey for the fifth consecutive day after Christmas. There were occasional moments of great magnitude, but I found myself becoming mesmerised without the uplifting feeling I would have hoped for. Then a song would end and we’d start the process again. I quite liked “The Hearing”, which had an extra ring in the guitar work, and I felt momentary excitement as “The Alchemist” had some fire and punch in its build-up, but announcing a three-song encore to finish, the band returned to nondescript normality. This was an exercise in technical perfection. The problem was that it was too perfect, thus stifling any drama or excitement within the performance.

Part 2 

Review Andrew Doherty  Photos Paul van der Wolf (Anubis Gate) and Håkan Lundbom