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Report: Soen + Madder Mortem + Heavenwood @ Hard Club

Zé Serôdio 13/11/2017 Concerts, Reports Comments Off on Report: Soen + Madder Mortem + Heavenwood @ Hard Club
Report: Soen + Madder Mortem + Heavenwood @ Hard Club

Soen finished their European tour with two dates in Portugal. On the 21st of October, the band played at Hard Club (Porto) with Madder Mortem and Heavenwood as opening bands.

It was exactly nine o’clock when the Portuguese band Heavenwood entered Hard Club’s stage. This time the band was lead by Miguel Inglês (Equaleft‘s vocalist), currently replacing Heavenwood frontman Ernesto Guerra (absent due to personal reasons). Heavenwood started the night with ”Arcadia Order”, taken from the album ”Abyss Masterpiece”. With a set mainly focused on their most recent work, ”The Tarot of the Bohemians”, they didn’t exclude from the set some of their crowd pleasing older songs. To end their performance, they played their classic song ”Frithiof’s Saga”, included in their debut opus “Diva” released back in 1996. It was a good warm-up show for what came next.

Next on stage were the Norwegian progressive metal band Madder Mortem. The band was Soen support band  during the european tour. They showed an immense energy from start to finish of their performance. Their set begun with the song ”If I Could” from their latest album ”Red in Tooth and Claw” (2016). Under the lead of the vocalist Agnete Kirkevaag, they managed to efficiently grab the audience attention. With a set divided between the latest album and some of their oldest songs. They decided to close their show with ”Underdogs”, a song filled with a strong message. Despite being a somewhat unknown band to the Portuguese public, the band left the stage triumphant leaving behind an elated audience. Hopefully, after the successful show, Madder Mortem will gather more attention in a near future!

The headliner of the night was the Swedish progressive rock band Soen. A visibly excited and thrilled crowd welcomed them into Hard Club’s stage. The first chords of their performance lead into their song ”Canvas”, taken from their debut album ”Cognitive”. The connection between the audience and the band remained strong since the beginning of their show. Despite some minor sound problems, the band stayed cheerful throughout the performance, specially the lead guitarist Marcus Jidell who showed an unique capacity to entice the crowd. One of the most beautiful moments was when they played the ballad ”The Words”, leading  to most of the audience that filled the venue to sing along with the vocalist. Lead by frontman Joel Ekelöf, the setlist was divided to showcase their three released albums. Songs like ”Savia”, ”Tabula Rasa” and ”Jinn” were some of the highlights of this night. Soen delivered a powerful concert that many will find hard to forget, showing that Soen live are better than ever!

Special thanks to Free Music Events

Text and photos by: José Serôdio
Managing Editor: Rita Limede / Elsa Marques

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