Sunday, 29 September 2024
The Australia four-piece came to a very well-attended Parkteatret on a cool Sunday evening, for the first time since 2018. It was a set driven by a theme, as charismatic front-man Jim Grey explained, of time travel. It was a high-energy set, with pieces selected for their driving rhythms before their melodies, punctuated only by Grey’s repartee. They set the bar high, starting with the single “The World Breathes With Me” and “Golum” from “Charcoal Grace”, before taking a trip in the time machine, when we went back to 2015, to the “Bloom” album, with a medley of “Bloom” and “Marigold”. This was the part of the concert which put the most emphasis on the vocal performance, especially the gentle opening.
And so, on to “In Contact”, which Grey reminded the audience was when drummer Josh Griffin joined the band. The audience were animated and they gave Griffin an ovation, which he made the most of, stretching his arms up out of his kit. “Milking it like a fucking farmer! Tragic.” remarked Grey. But he had earned it. The drum parts in the band’s music are demanding. He was very much on the beat, even with the more polyrhythmic material in “Golem”, more unflappable metronomic playing on “The Tempest”, or the deep groove on “The Hands Are The Hardest”.
Bass player Dale Prinsse joined the band in 2020 for “Rise Radiant”, “not bad year for music”, reflected Grey, but “a shitty time to be alive – all of us were changed by that time”. Prinsse, complete with moustache, held stage right, leaping up onto his platform, or marching back to the drum riser to play alongside Griffin. His standout moment was the riff on “The Stormchaser” from “Charcoal Grace”, which was slick and nimble.
If time travel was the band’s theme for the evening, the listener’s theme was “polish”. The set was intense, perfectly executed, and played with utter commitment by all four members. There was some taping or triggering involved – the keyboard effects and other ambient sounds were provided mechanically, but it was hard to see whether this was done by one of the band or via a recorded backing track. This isn’t a cause for criticism. I think we are passed the point where we need every note played by the people standing in front of us, provided the core of the music is live and authentic. Also, as Grey was at pains to point out, touring is, economically, a difficult business for bands these days. The cost of having, for example, a touring keyboard player is not to be underestimated.
Besides, it didn’t matter, such was the force of music played that you couldn’t tell there were only four musicians on stage. Guitarist and musical mastermind Sam Vallen managed to weave together lead and rhythm lines seamlessly, so that the absence of a second guitarist was never felt. Having Prinsse’s bass filling out the sound helps of course, but it was more a matter of good arrangement that music written by five people or overdubbed in the studio was played perfectly well by four. Vallen loves a solo and he had one in almost every track. Much of the time, he seemed lost in his element, his eyes half closed, his fingers flying over the fretboard, or holding tight as he ground out the rhythm parts. The main part of the set closed with “Mute”, given Vallen a final chance to dazzle us all, before the encore.
A final word on Jim Grey, the frontman and our host for the evening. For anyone who has not been to a Caligula’s Horse show, his wit and charisma alone are reason to go. He engaged the crowd, he teased them about their reactions to his comments, self-consciously plugged the band’s merch, directed a singalong before “Oceanrise”, and even threw in the odd Norwegian phrase. And that’s before we consider the vocal performance. It was first rate from start to finish. There was power on “The World Breathes With Me”, menace on “The Tempest” and delicacy on “Bloom / Marigold”. As often seems to be the case at Parkteatret, it took the team a while to get the sound balance right once the room filled up, so the vocals were not as clear early on as they might have been, but that was soon resolved and you could hear every note. It remains one of the finest voices in progressive metal, full of character, inflection, and a beautiful tone. He was also in almost constant motion, whether talking or singing, marching across the stage or headbanging on his stage-edge platform. When he wasn’t singing, he was feeling the music with the rest of us. As he said early on, we were there to be “companions in music”.
All in all a strong set, with one surprise in “The Hands Are The Hardest”, a very good selection from “Charcoal Grace” and the earlier records, and “The Daughter of the Mountain” for the encore, which was a delight. For the undersigned, the only regret was that there was nothing from “The Tide, the Thief & River’s End”, not least as we were time-travelling. It was a lively and mostly aged under 40 crowd of devoted fans or as Grey quipped, “prog nerds”. To coin a phrase, that “[full] room [was] filled with applause”, and rightly so. 5/6
Text: Alex Maines
Photography: Anne-Marie Forker