Written by:	Bad English
Published:	November 29, 2014

On a Halloween eve in the dark, cold and freezing Luleå where 2 local bands were playing live in a small venue called Lillan. This time there were no tavern wenches, no flying witches, no weird looking pumpkins and weird events (unless you'd consider putting Christmas decorations on Halloween night normal, as one house owner did). Just Heavy metal.

The entrance was free, but only 30 people showed up. And people say nothing metal and alternative music-related happens here in Luleå (yes I do complain myself because of the low number of concerts but I do attend all free ones).

OK back to business: Vertution is a heavy metal band from Luleå; I saw them once before and they played mainly Iron Maiden and Iced Earth covers. I don't remember song titles now, but musically it was damn awesome. Back to today, they have been writing their own songs and played 4 of those live. One title was No Man's Lands, a long song that was a mixture of a ballad and HM elements, and it was simply kick ass, old school sounding . Maybe we should use a new terminology? Like ''new wave of Swedish old school heavy metal''?

Four original songs plus one Iron Maiden cover, I think it was Revelations. The performance was awesome, I thought it sounded like a studio recording because of the damn great quality guitars, bass, and drums. Only thing that I can complain about is the vocals, but it was the same as all live gigs, show me a singer who can do the same singing live as they can in the studio (maybe some opera singer with a weird mustache and weird looking suit that modern men even don't know how to put on). Also the x factor about unknown songs is if you don't know lyrics, live gigs can be harder to understand and hear what the bands are saying. In the Iced Earth and W.A.S.P. gigs I went to some time ago I could sing along, here I could not, except maybe on the Maiden cover. Anyway, I wish there could be more gigs and demos online asap.

Jonathan Karlsson - Vocals
Samuel Dean - Guitar
Kristoffer Karlsson - Guitar
Björn Edlund - Drums
Sebastian Karlsson - Bass

Facebook
Soundcloud
Myspace

Unvoid - a band from Piteå. Hard to label this genre because I hate giving names to genres that go out of traditional death, thrash, heavy, speed, doom, black, gothic and so on. Modern day alternative bands are hard to label. It was a mix between aggressive guitar riffs and softer guitar sound, growls and calmer female vocal parts.

In the beginning I did not understand whether she was singing in Swedish or English, again live singing problem (maybe Tarja or Floor Jensen don't have this problem). Anyway, they played 5 songs and 2 of those were from their demo. I guess those songs were Relieved Of Absence and Envy Of Gratitude.

Line up:
Lisa Bjernhagen - Vocals
Emil Landström - Guitar
Jacob Edström - Guitar
Linnéa Burman - Bass
Martin Trygg - Drums

Facebook
Soundcloud

I could not take pictures or film the live performance so I borrowed pictures from both bands' Facebook pages.

Thanks to Susan, Øyvind, Ilham, and hanna of steel for help, advice and proofreading.