Ever heard a gothic metal band live with constant feedback on the microphone? How about two?
Read on.
As a colleague said two nights ago at the Močvara venue, this is a more softening-up event consisting of Sirenia and Meteora. As Steve Hughes once said (back when he was funny), “After you listen to Slayer for 6 hours during the day, you need something to relax with during the evening.” Personally for me, this is for me the kind of music, especially early Tristania. So tonight we have one fifth of that band.
You work with what you have.
These kinds of events are not your usual sonic manifestation in Močvara, so it is a nice change after an array of past more extreme metal events and those to come in the next month. The event was brought to you by the gentlemen from Hangtime Agency, the same agency that brought them four years ago if I’m not mistaken. The crowd turnout was quite impressive the last time around. This time was a bit different.
As was written in the announcement, unfortunately, the Croatian band Countess couldn’t perform due to personal family reasons, which was disappointing for many but certainly understandable.

So Meteora carried the full load of warming us up for the main course of the evening. Formed in 2010 in Hungary, they have 4 albums under their discography belt, starting with Our Paradise in 2017 and Darkest Light in 2026 as their last release, not counting singles and EPs in between. With an array of various albums and EPs, you would say that this is a quite active band.
Having that in mind, that night they looked like a band that formed maybe a few years ago, and this is their first tour. Musically speaking, it’s a mishmash of melodic death metal with growls from Máté Fülöp, male clean vocals from Atilla Király, and “main vocalist” Noémi Holló with gothic/symphonic elements. That on paper would sound awesome like some later albums from bands like Draconian. This is throwing everything but the kitchen sink together with a shrug and “let’s see what happens” attitude. Unfortunately little of that sticks together. Either the music is the problem or the overall sound quality; that was a whole different story. This must be one of the worst live sounds I’ve heard in this venue in a long while.

And this is not the venue’s fault; I saw much more extreme bands (Suffocation, Defeated Sanity, and Cryptopsy) at the same place, and the sound was clear and kickass. The case this time, for whatever reason, the sound guy thought they were playing in an avenue twice as big, and everything is twice as loud as it should be, and every instrument is fighting to be heard. The biggest victim soundwise was Noémi’s vocals being buried and with an odd reverb effect. Add that with the genre problem, this band is still trying to combine different sonic elements in their songs. Not to be completely negative here, the song In My Name really delivers and shows promise for the band. Unfortunately, it was the last song of their setlist performed to a venue hall full. In short, the band has all the right ingredients but not sorted in a proper way.
Setlist:
- Memento Mori
- Broken Mind
- Shadows of Ignorance
- Darkest Light
- Rebirth
- Ghosts
- Danse Macabre
- In My Name

After a massive equipment overhaul, Sirenia entered the stage. This is their 25th anniversary tour, and their stellar setlist shows this gig is for the old fans. Some new tracks are a bag of old songs from the first three albums. Starting with Meridian (easily my personal favorite), the band showcased a professional approach in their musicianship, although the view at the stage was one of the oddest things I saw: no guitar amps. This must be the first band I saw performing this kind of music without any kind of amps present. With only four of them on the stage, it means that the bass guitar, keyboards, and choirs are all going directly through the speakers. Make of it what you will.
Nevertheless, performance wise the band made a stellar effort to do a good show to nicely filled venue despite the sound issue that continued, the feedback from the microphone was constant to the point that I became a chore listening to them, borderline annoyance. Even their vocalist, Emmanuelle Zoldan, appealed to the sound guy to fix the problem with the feedback, mentioning that she is pretty much singing blind and can barely hear herself. Alas, little had changed during their whole performance.

Which is a shame, because it was clear as day that the audience was pumped to see them and hear their classics. Even their songs like The Last Call or The Path to Decay from the commercial effort The13th Floor has that infectious groove that live is twice as powerful.
I guess it was one those gigs on the tour and unfortunately both parties got the bad end of it.
Setlist:
- Meridian
- Sister Nightfall
- Nightside Den
- Euphoria
- Lost in Life
- Callous Eyes
- In My Darkest Hours
- Star-Crossed
- The Last Call
- The Seventh Summer
- Lithium and a Lover
- My Mind’s Eye
- The Other Side
- The Path to Decay
Photos by Davor Birt from Balkanrock, used with kind permission.