PANTHEIST

GALLILEOUS

Little-known Gallileous formed in 1990 but split up in 1995 with just a demo to their name. However, they reunited in 2006 and two years later released their debut album. Hailing from Poland, this doom quartet’s blending of styles was fascinating. It was funeral doom metal at its core with heavy progressive metal moments and deep melodies. Bursts of exploration erase the typical melodramatic depressive soundscapes associated with this kind of doom metal. There is an aggressive atmospheric quality that is absent in many other bands peddling a similar style, with such a balance being a real challenge to achieve. The audience enjoys what they hear from the band and hopefully the band has made some new converts here tonight.

DATE:

VENUE:

Saturday 27th February 2010

The Gaff in London, UK

PANTHEIST

Pantheist, formerly from Belgium before relocating to London, take the stage to a healthy amount of attendees given the late hour of the night (not to mention London’s usual weekend engineering works affecting the Underground line closest to the venue). Frontman Kostas Panagiotou is unusually positioned at the front centre of the stage with his keyboard looking somewhat intrusive. Intense stony funeral doom metal is the order of night, injecting bold misery into the pub venue. Naturally, the setlist is six songs long, each track wholly surpassing an average duration. Two new songs, ‘Broken Statue’ and ‘The Storm’, are issued out. They follow in the vein of Pantheist’s most recent musical observations and are certainly aurally pleasing. Off the latest full-length ‘Journey Through Lands Unknown’, ‘Dum Spiro Despero’ showcases the successful progressive edge Pantheist have instilled into the latter times of their music. The more accessible side of Pantheist theoretically works better live, relying less so on repetitive qualities to evoke a substantial atmosphere. However, ‘Time’ from the group’s debut album ‘O Solitude’ receives an enviable reaction from the audience but not as much as the demanding title track, closing the night with Panagiotou remarking his lack of care as to whether they over run any curfew or not. As the song unwinds, it becomes hard to imagine a Pantheist set devoid of this track, being the centre piece of the debut album and translating particularly heavy live. Some doom metal bands cannot function live glowingly because the music is too introverted and the best atmosphere is not always summoned up when the listener is surrounded by hundreds of other people, varying in their levels of sobriety but Pantheist managed to overcome this with a level of class that most bands cannot accommodate.

GALLILEOUS

Reviews by Elena Francis