Report: Long Distance Calling + Support Acts – Athens, Greece

Long Distance Calling, Hedvika, Kalpa // AN Club, Athens, Greece // 22.03.2014

The 22th of March should be the day when every post rocker in Athens should be very grateful for. A greatly influential band for post-rock, the German Long Distance Calling, is visiting Athens and An Club, two years after their latest visit in Greece’s capital. Along with the band, two Greek fresh-starters in music, Hedvika and Kalpa, will share the stage, supporting the band and filling the venue with post and sludge metal sounds. With a great, rocking mood, the fans filled An club from the very start, ready to spend their night rocking with three beautiful music groups.

First to join the stage were the greek sludgers Kalpa. Kalpa may not have an official release yet, but they sure can destroy the stage with some of their songs. The band is currently busy rehearsing for the future recording of their first EP. Their style is orientated to the ambient sludge metal, with plenty of guitar melodies and post metal touches. The band is an instrumental one; no vocals are included in their music.

As far as Kalpa’s performance is concerned, the band performed great, but the minor problems with their sound affected negatively the stage performance. I liked the songs, as well as the effort of the band on stage, but there were some moments where I could hear well the lead guitar, which was playing melodies over the heavy guitar riffs. I found this sound problem kind of disturbing, but I also know that the band made its one hundred percent effort to satisfy us. Kalpa stayed on stage for about twenty to thirty minutes and left us ‘thirsty’ for more, looking forward to hear from them again in the future and of course to check their upcoming releases.

Next band on stage; Hedvika. Hedvika is known in the greek underground scene, especially for their ‘The Evidence of Absence’ record, a record that will literally…send you to space. The band exists from the 2011 and is totally active in the underground music scene. Their style can be characterized as old-school post-metal, with heavy and harsh vocals and doom moments.

A great amount of energy flowed out of Hedvika during their performance. The band played heavily and the sound has been improved (it didn’t get perfect but it was ok). Under those circumstances, the band honored us with a few songs off the record and one new, unreleased song. I really liked the new song, it was ambient, slow in a few moments but heavy and aggressive too. On stage Hedvika is energetic, shaking the venue and forcing the audience to bang their heads heavily.

The time for Long Distance Calling to perform on stage has come. The crowed was thrilled when the band started preparing the stage for their turn. Long Distance Calling made the night special, because as a band, they are always one of the best on stage, in a music genre that isn’t popular for the greatly wild live performances.

The band performed a variety of songs, such as: ‘Inside The Flood’, ‘Aurora’ and ‘Black Paper Planes’. Dave and Flo, the two guitarists, were always moving and getting in contact with the audience. Marsen, on the vocals and on the keyboards was absolutely thrilling too. His vocals may not have been the ideal ones (he didn’t sing in every song though), but I really liked the way he was controlling the samples and the keyboard’s background to the music the band was performing.

The band performed for eighty minutes long. They only performed one encore, due to the departure of the fans after the first encore. I liked the songs off their latest record, and the switch between the ambient and dark moments, to the heavy and rocking riffs. Long Distance Calling is surely a band that can and has the skills to make someone have fun and get thrilled by some well-performed, mind-blowing music.

The concert ended and we surely ended up satisfied. I would love to hear a few more songs from Long Distance Calling, as well as from the support band and I think they could perform a bit more. But, besides a few notable problems with the sound generally, I believe all bands gave their best and accomplished a great live.