KATATONIA, EVERGREY, KLOGR – live at Rockefeller
- Posted on 18-11-2025
Photo gallries:
Photos by Jonathan Mazin
Text by Andrea Chirulescu
Mid November in Oslo, there’s no better time of the year to attend a gig with a Swedish combo that delivers dark, melancholic metal – Katatonia and Evergrey. A bit annoying that it’s actually the first day when temperatures seem to drop so low so all of a sudden you have to figure out the needed clothes for surviving outside and not doing a sauna indoors. But that’s first world problems, obviously. I’m glad the concerts took place at Rockefeller as it offers plenty of watch angles with its 3 levels and some elevated areas, perfect for midgets like me. And for the heavy clothes, they offer a nice wardrobe. Rockefeller also has this lunge like area where a big merch stand can be placed and you could actually find quite a good selection of items from all 3 bands. It’s also the place where artists can sometimes hang out after or before their show and you can maybe snatch an authograph.
Prior to the two Swedish acts, we had the Italian-American act Klogr that had to squeeze in on half of the stage. Yes, they still found space to bring their own ‘floor’ lights, which overall had made quite an atmosphere during the show. But at times it had some really powerful strobes like effects and I noticed quite a number of people turning their faces away or covering their eyes. They had to have the drumkit on the right side of the stage, and the 3 guitarists squeezed in the middle, with Gabriele Rustichelli’s ornamental mic stand making quite an impression. Gabriele draws a lot of attention both through his cool metal guy look with John Lennon type glasses but also as he’s quite talented at leading the show and sings beautifully. The band delivers an interesting prog type alternative rock. It gets people interested and made me curious to check out their recordings given their sound felt somewhat new. They only got to play for 30 minutes so I believe there is more to be discovered about this band.
After a lengthy headlining tour at the end of last year, Evergrey has had the time to charge their batteries and return full force to European stages. And luckily, the Oslo show is one of the first of the tour and the band offers peak levels of excellent musicianship. It’s always a joy to watch Tom Englund and Henrik Danhage’s guitar ‘plays’ as they are passing along their beautiful guitar solos throughout each song. It’s quite fascinating to watch. Tom’s voice has always been excellent when I watched them and tonight is no exception. He’s majestically doing the time travel on the first three songs, A Silent Arc and King of Errors and Distance, and then gradually ending up with their latest single, OXYGEN. I was hoping they’d have Jonas as guest on the single they released together with him, but that didn’t happen and they used backing vocals instead. I certainly need to update myself on the band’s latest releases – more or less since the pandemic – as the live songs are so beautiful. I’ve only been familiar with “Falling From The Sun” which sounded lovely live.
Evergrey are a band with quite many dedicated fans and a decent amount of released albums, so I guess it’s never an easy choice on how many crowd pleasers you give up in order to make room for newer stuff, when you have a 45 minutes show. But people seem to love the new stuff, so that’s an extra motivator for me to check it out more thoroughly than just a rushed listen from 3 years ago. Besides the guitar play between Tom and Henrik, sweet keyboard parts by Rikard Zander, we also have the fantastic Johan Niemann on bass and I don’t think their songs would be this emotional if he wasn’t present. With his bass, of course. He’s really getting into the music and builds so much groove on each portion of the songs. Which are always a nice dynamic of melancholy, power, sadness but also strength. All of it nicely wrapped by Simen Sandnes on drums, even if he has joined them only since last year. He seems to have figured out the way into this well established machine. And being Norwegian, he got some extra cheering from the crowd and hopefully people bought enough merch to pay his wage.
Katatonia have recently put out a new album, “Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State”, which had to make its way into the setlist for this tour. The album opener, Thrice, makes for a great starting song as well, but whoever crafted the list has nicely blended old and new and the crowd was super excited when the older familiar songs started. Seems like The Great Cold Distance is something they can never really leave behind, as those songs seemed to get the loudest cheers – Leaders, July. But I noticed plenty of singalong for other songs, and that was nice.
While they had a huge banner covering the tall back-wall, seems like the modern age of touring includes screens on stage. I’m seeing them more and more often. Two vertical ones on the side and one in front of the drum raiser. Really big screens, which project videos or parts of the videos that came out with the songs. Or pieces of art made for the albums. Quite a nice way of showing off the whole feeling of Katatonia, both audio and visual. Actually, Evergrey had the same, now that I think of it.
Even if I didn’t get to hear any of my absolute favorites, I still loved to headbang and I am actually always surprised how much more intense and dynamic Katatonia feels live, than when listening to the albums. They’re always a soundtrack for gloomy days, but they are a bunch of happy smiling people on stage, who love what they are doing and deliver it with the highest of professionalism. Jonas’ voice sounded very nice and clear where I was standing. I did attend some of their concerts where it was overpowered by instruments, and I am glad it was not the case tonight. Sadly, the second half of the show was overpowered by happy drunk fans who had to talk really loud most of the times so it took away from the beauty of the music. Wish you’d be allowed to carry tape and shut people’s mouths at concerts. I had to relocate and as I couldn’t find a nice spot to see the stage properly, I left before the last few songs. But I’m happy with how the performances were delivered this evening and hope the rest of the tour is at least as good as the Oslo shows have been.