Saturday 22 August
Göteborg doesn’t forget its roots. Metal music has been part of the core of this city’s musical landscape for years. Now, we have a festival celebrating that, with its leading local lights making up the roster. The “…Brinner” name may have been used before, but this is its first visit to this foundational place, and back at the site of the infamous In Flames set at the Metaltown Festival in 2010 which set the nearby bridge shaking. In Flames, nothing short of death metal nobility in these parts, were top the bill. Avatar, a band unquestionably in their ascendency, have a very deserved place high up the roster. Napalm Death also give the festival a backdrop that goes even further back in time, doubtless influential for so many modern metal acts. And all of this next to Göteborg’s historic waterway. We started our day by checking out Dark Tranquillity’s set on the main stage. Bring it on.
Words: Alex Maines and Anne-Marie Forker
Images: Anne-Marie Forker
You could tell Dark Tranquillity were at home. Home gigs can understandably carry a certain nervous energy, but there was little sign of it here: the band delivered with authority, confidence and obvious pleasure at playing to their own city. Frontman Mikael Stanne owned the stage, strutting back and forth and reinforcing the lyrics with sweeping and pointed gestures. Keyboardist Martin Brändström handled the intricate arpeggios of songs such as “Terminus (Where Death Is Most Alive)” with apparent ease, while Johan Reinholdz’s guitar playing was equally assured. The set was a carefully judged tour through Dark Tranquillity’s catalogue, opening with “The Wonders at Your Feet” before moving through “Nothing to No One”, “Unforgivable” and “Terminus”. “Atoma” was an early highpoint, giving Stanne the opportunity to show off his sonorous clean voice, before the band shifted gears with “The New Build”, “Not Nothing” and the imperious “Punish My Heaven”. “ThereIn” and “Lost to Apathy” kept the momentum high, while “Misery’s Crown” brought the expected emotional release towards the end. The selection gave the performance a satisfying sense of breadth without ever allowing the set to lose its momentum.
It wasn’t just the music, though. Despite the darkness of the songs and the bleak, existential territory of much of the lyrics, the joy the band felt playing to a substantial crowd in their home town — at a festival celebrating Göteborg’s extraordinary metal heritage — was palpable. Stanne in particular seemed to relish the occasion, combining his familiar intensity with the relaxed confidence of a band playing on home ground. And then came the perfect final flourish. “Blinded by Fear”, the At the Gates classic, brought In Flames frontman Anders Fridén onto the stage alongside Stanne. More than simply a guest appearance, it felt like a celebration of Gothenburg metal itself: two major figures from the city’s scene sharing the stage to perform a song by another of its defining bands. The result was exuberant and communal, turning the closing moments into a celebration of the musical lineage that made Göteborg metal what it is. A joyous and well-choreographed performance, with the right shifts in tone and energy, it was perfectly tailored to the festival: authoritative enough to underline Dark Tranquillity’s status as one of Göteborg’s foundational metal bands, but celebratory enough to feel like a homecoming rather than simply another festival appearance. The closing appearance by Fridén made that sense of shared history particularly vivid, providing an appropriately memorable ending to a strong hometown set. 5/6 (AM).
Napalm Death, the self-described “unapologetic noise band from Birmingham” delivered one of the most intense performances of Göteborg Brinner, turning the festival’s second stage into a scene of barely controlled chaos. While the festival’s main stage offered the spectacle of major Gothenburg metal names, Napalm Death created something more visceral and intimate. This is not music for big arenas, it is for smaller spaces where it can hit you right in the face. Classics such as “Scum”, “Suffer the Children” and “You Suffer” retain their powerful impact live: brutally short, brutally fast and over almost before you have time to process what happened. Barney Greenway’s distinctive vocals cut through the relentless guitars and drums (and the bass, played by a stand in for Shane Embury who is taking a break). The band’s political anger and social consciousness remain just as important as the sheer musical aggression. Jim Carrey once joked that one day Napalm Death would want to “slow down and do some duets”. Four decades into their career, that day has still not arrived. 4/6 (AMF)
Avatar’s trademarks are their theatricality and, more and more, the variety of their music, between and within tracks. Their set here was no different. Starting with the pounding, visceral “Captain Goat”, they set the bar high. Frontman Johannes Eckerström entered the stage like the Nightwatchman of the Apocalypse, carrying a huge lantern, his cloak swaying in the stiff breeze coming off Göta älv. His voice was unusually deep, ringing, serious. Then, immediately, the tone changed with “Let It Burn”, and Eckerström took his range up several octaves. Jonas Jarlsby was on dazzling form, with solo after solo played with speed, panache and vibrato. From there, Avatar demonstrated just how broad their palette has become. “The Eagle Has Landed” brought another shift in mood and scale, while “In the Airwaves” showed the band’s more melodic, expansive side. “Bloody Angel” and “Death and Glitz” pulled things back towards the heavier, more recognisably Avatar territory, with Eckerström moving effortlessly between menace, melody and outright theatrical excess. “The Dirt I’m Buried In” was another reminder that their songwriting has become considerably more nuanced than the costumes and stagecraft might initially suggest.
The core of the set was understandably made up of music that fit with their more established sound and was more in keeping with the tenor of the rest of the festival. “Tonight We Must Be Warriors” and “Don’t Go in the Forest” nevertheless showed that the newer material is perfectly capable of standing alongside the established favourites, while “Smells Like a Freakshow” provided one of the evening’s most obvious opportunities for the audience to throw themselves into the spectacle. And when “Hail the Apocalypse” arrived, it was less a change of gear than the inevitable culmination of everything that had come before: huge riffs, huge vocals and Eckerström conducting the whole thing like a particularly sinister ringmaster. What was most striking, though, was how little Avatar now need the theatre to carry them. The costumes, props and eccentricity remain integral to their identity — and Eckerström would hardly be Eckerström without them — but increasingly they feel like an enhancement to an already formidable live band rather than the main attraction. The music is doing more and more of the talking. This is yet more evidence of a band at the very top of its live game. The writing and, as a result, the performance are growing in confidence and quality. Avatar still give you the spectacle you came for, but underneath it is a band that has become increasingly assured, versatile and musically ambitious. Sets like this one at Göteborg Brinner should soon be expected, not merely appreciated, from a band playing this well. 5.5/6 (AM)
Just like in 2010, they brought something to the air, In Flames. The crowd was electric with anticipation, even in the hard wind coming off Göta älv. They were packed tight together, breathing in the moment. The event had been advertised ahead of time as In Flames’s own festival, and the name was fitting, and with so many of their fanbase there, the opening album teaser for next Spring was very welcome. That got a massive cheer, with its elusive, passing images of the band members in the studio. Slowly, the band took to the stage, waving, giving the crowd the horns. The cheers started, the excitement grew. Then, Anders Fridén strolled on, his At The Gates t-shirt paying tribute to the missing member of Göteborg’s metal trinity, absent because of the untimely death of singer Tomas Lindberg aged 52. The crowd erupted. “Colony” was a brutal opening, dark, the visuals marked by strange graphical elements that looked like they belonged on an AI surveillance system. Then, the real explosion – a massive burst of pyro, in front of the stage and at the back, further electrifying the event. “Deliver Us” was a change of pace, but not atmosphere, and the rain began to fall, cold, drifting in the bleak wind. It could not have been better orchestrated.
When Matt Heafy of Trivium later joined the band for “Artifacts of the Black Rain” from “The Jester Race”, you’d have thought it had all been planned. The mood had been sustained by what can only be described as a greatest hits parade, with material spanning almost the entirety of their recorded history. “Gyroscope”, played live for the first time since 2012, was a particularly welcome surprise, before Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquillity, once the lead singer of the band, joined them for “Behind Space”. It was a beautiful moment, taking us all back to the band’s beginnings on “Lunar Strain”, when the underground metal movement in Göteborg unfolded into something that would become musically historic and truly significant. But the show refused to become a museum piece. “Trigger”, “Only for the Weak”, “I Am Above” and “Take This Life” turned the closing stretch into a collective release, before “My Sweet Shadow” brought the main set to its inevitable, triumphant conclusion. For all the thoughts of heritage, this was not nostalgia. In Flames sounded like a band still looking forward, with the past firmly under their feet rather than on their backs. Göteborg Brinner may have been a celebration of where they came from, but In Flames made an equally convincing case for where they are going. 6/6 (AM)
