Evergrey, Fractal Universe & Virtual Symmetry - Gebr. de Nobel Leiden, 25 September 2022

Evergrey finally making it to de Nobel again, this after several postponed tours. Within this delay they released two new albums, so suddenly they had lots of new music to present. Originally Witherfall would be supporting them on this tour and them being out of the package was a big loss for me. Luckily the two new supports both turned out to be good bands as well. Looking at this bill one week before Progpower did make you realize that this evening's package was more Progpower than Progpower itself this year. So a sort of warm-up show it became, with for me meeting up with people from various different spectra of my metal universe.

Virtual Symmetry opened tonight at what initially looked a very empty Nobel. Luckily that improved with time. This band is from Lugano, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. I don't know who were Swiss or Italian, but overall the band did remind of several other Italian bands who play accessible prog and power metal (think DGM, Pathosray and Zen). Their playing was good, as was the music. Not shockingly renewing the world of progmetal, but definitely quality. This all topped with an enthusiastic presentation and we can speak of a very nice opener of the evening. 

Next band were Fractal Universe from France. They play the more progressive and technical side of death metal. Last year they released The Impassable Horizon and I checked it out. With my life between two countries I did not order it at the time, since when back home the list of must get albums grew bigger already.Yesterday I made up for that at te end of the evening as Fractal Universe turned out to be great on stage. Next to grunts a fair share of clean vocals and at times I thought of a heavier version of Pain of Salvation. The band were running all over the stage and at the end the vocalist even appeared a few times with saxophone to spice matters up. Well I saw Wound Collector in Musicon this Friday and that band sets the standard for all saxophones in metal, still here it added something as well. I can not call them a surprise of the evening, when expectations were high already, but as good as hoped for and defiitely one to see in Baarlo one day.

And then it was up to Evergrey to conquer de Nobel. Well they have been here before, so that turned out easy. Evergrey to me falls in the category  bands I do go see live, but stop following on CD. So when they toured three new albums I don't know the result was that I did not recognize one song until Touch of Blessing closed the regular set. As such not much of a problem, since their music is accessible at first hearing as well. Tom Englund was good by voice this evening and his understated announcements in Swedish dry style work. The music was very Evergrey which means heavy. They are falling under the progmetal flag, but actually we get a heavy metal show, with power and prog bits blended in at times. The band are around for thirty years Tom said and I saw them first at Progpower again. I remember that I wondered why their bassist wore a leather skirt at that show in 2000. Nowadays they still sound pretty similar and their bassists still looks different. A great show, this time even not at the extreme loud levels I saw them last times, so more enjoyable. Still was it me or was Recreation Day a notch better than the other songs and were Fractal Universe the silent winners of the evening gaining many new fans?