An Evening With Knives live at Area51, Eindhoven
Album release party 27-01-18
Area51 in Eindhoven is home to one of the biggest indoor skateparks of Europe. What a wonderful place to hold an album release party for three good ol’ boys from Eindhoven with some new massive tunes. We are talking about An Evening With Knives who wanted to celebrate the release of their full-sized debut album Serrated. An album that took its time to appear. Cause even though the crowdfunding project to get the thing sponsored was filled quickly; the band took its time. It even, for a moment, looked like a ‘take the money and run’ kind of deal. But in all seriousness, the drummer Ivo Jonkers, got badly injured during the celebratory night in honor of collecting enough dough to start recording. After hospitalization, it took quite some time before his knee was good enough again to start drumming. But now. Looking out across a sold-out crowd in Area51, the three boys can only smile and realize that they made it. Overcoming these difficulties only made the Serrated record better and improved An Evening With Knives to a serious degree…
But before we are treated to some words of thanks and the new AEWK tunes we are treated to some heavy ruckus by Offerblok (Pronunciation: off her block. With a silent H.) Also, in part, from Eindhoven Rockcity this five-piece aims for the absolute dark heart of the sun. Doom, post and sludge metal, but with a black and dismal soul. The short set wavers between an intense, almost ritualistic experience and attention loss. For even though we never want musicians to take themselves too seriously, this kind of music usually benefits from seriousness. But of course, this is not an Offerblok show, but An Evening With Knives party, and therefor we forgive them all the smiles and laughs and jokes and just nod our heads to some damn fine twisted tunes and growling vocals….
And now for the bad news. We love Area51. The skatepark, the bar, the concert hall. It’s all good. But what’s up with the horrible beer? Goddamn. I had to try them all to find out there is not one good tasting option. And what was that completely pervasive smell? A sort of bitter honey scented tea smell? Was that also due to the beer? Or did a keg of tea get thrown into the ventilation system?
Two minor points for an otherwise splendid venue and great night. An Evening With Knives gave us a damn fine set of older tunes and new ones. Their very own style of highly atmospheric almost emotional metal which rubs up against post metal and grabs some fine parts from sludge and doom is a very deep and intense ride. Slow dragging riffs and beautiful melodies trade places with thundering rumbles and murky tones. Just as much as the howls from vocalist Marco Gelissen battle with different layers of heaviness. It is highly admirable how these tracks all seem to exhume some sort of existential pain, anger or fear while still retaining some small glimmer of light. It’s hard to pick favorites during the set. All of them seem to have their merits. But as a fellow fan stated at one point during the show, ‘Blind’s Man Guess is such an amazing song’. So we might be tempted to pick that one. For it is very true statement, but soon after came a new one that was just as good or even better. I think it was Fade Out. It definitely gave us the best view of the night; Matthijs Kropff, the Lighttown Fidelity owner, that puts out the vinyl, going absolutely wild to the track. That’s what we like to see and that’s what it’s all about. Love for music! And it speaks out in every fiber of the AEWK spirit. Yes, three good ol’ boys with some freaking great tunes. A very great way to celebrate the release of Serrated, which we will start spinning immediately!
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