Apocalyptica: Plays Metallica by Four Cellos at Colston Hall - Live Music Review
Posted on: 2018-03-05
Our rating:
Apocalyptica is an absolutely fabulous foursome, a Finnish cello metal band that will get you fist-pumping the air, craving a mosh-pit, and pounding your senses with such extraordinary interpretations and brain-melting performances.
When someone asks what gig you went to the night before, chances are pretty unlike your response will be that you saw four Finnish guys on cellos playing covers of Metallica songs. But that's precisely what my esteemed friend and I did, saw and wildly enjoyed when Apocalyptica played an absolutely astonishing set at Colston Hall in Bristol on Wednesday 28th February 2018.
True, initially the whole concept might have more than a hint of mild preposterousness about it, which is why the group themselves were doubtful it would ever work before their Plays Metallica by Four Cellos was released back in 1996. They needn't have worried though - they've since made eight albums with sales exceeding four million - and it turned out to be one of the most raucously insane, thrashingly heart-pumping and musically stunning gigs I've ever been to.
The quartet are all Sibelius Institute graduates, their playing frenetic and faultless, powerful and poetic and had the packed crowd utterly mesmerized and enthralled from beginning to end. Their last Bristol gig was at the Academy in 2015 but Colston Hall was their biggest and the crowd lapped it up. With just the four of them sat with their cellos performing against a blistering heavy metal soundtrack, their hair whipped in rhythm and their bows played, scraped, howled and screeched like four otherworldly divining rods propelled by Beelzebub himself.
Performing Plays Metallica by Four Cellos in its masterful entirety, the likes of Master of Puppets, The Unforgiven, Creeping Death and Harvester of Sorrow were tweaked for the range and dynamics of the cellos' timbre, often playing with such alternately sublime grace or splenetic fury you often doubted the phenomenal sounds were being played on cellos at all.
On the face of it, it's the least likely of instruments you'd expect to take on songs by the heavy metal masters, but it's far from a gimmicky show, demonstrating an adroit combination of incredibly talented players whilst simultaneously fusing the seemingly disparate worlds of classical and metal into one gutsy, gloriously, sonically satisfying whole. Their astute understanding of both genres for an unrelenting musical cross-over, their thrillingly consummate playing and passionate, reverential, groundbreaking take on the material resulted in an evening of unadulterated, back-to-back eargasms.
For one night only, the Colston Hall was brimming the electrifying intensity and buzz-inducing adrenaline of a proper heavy metal gig. It's a heady, intoxicating amalgam of savage rock concert-style hyperkenetic ferocity interspersed with moments of genuine, sublime beauty. Apocalyptica is an absolutely fabulous foursome, a Finnish cello metal band that will get you fist-pumping the air, craving a mosh-pit, and pounding your senses with such extraordinary interpretations and brain-melting performances.
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Article by:
Jamie is a writer, blogger, journalist, critic, film fan, soundtrack nerd and all-round Bristolian good egg. He loves the music of Philip Glass, the art of Salvador Dali, the writings of Charles Bukowksi and Hunter S Thompson, the irreverence of Harry Hill, and the timeless, straw-chomping exuberance of The Wurzels. You can sometimes find him railing against a surging tide of passing cyclists, or gorging himself senseless on the Oriental delights of a Cosmos all-you-can-eat buffet.
