Photo Credit: Oscar Dziedziela
There was a particular buzz around the city of Glasgow tonight as Scotland’s football team looked to qualify for next year’s Euros, but more importantly for us Future Palace were finally rolling into town to play their first headline Glasgow gig at Audio. This was to be a short but sweet tour of the UK for the German band with other dates in London and Sheffield, with the band also recently touring in Europe. Future Palace can be described as post hardcore metal or nu-metal, and for a three-piece band they can make one hell of a noise!
The night of music started nice and early at 7.30pm when VENUES appeared on the stage, as the Stuttgart based post-hardcore metal band warmed the crowd up for the main act. There was a decent sized crowd in to see singer Daniela ‘Lela’ Gruber lead the band through a setlist full of energy and a nice surprise as Gruber demanded that the crowd do a ‘wall of death’ which went down nicely with everyone. Scenes of mayhem ensued for a few minutes as the room split in two before charging towards each other to the delight of the band members. This set the standard for the remainder of the night as the band worked through their set with big hitting songs Reflections and We Are One and it was nice to hear their recently released single Oblivion played live. The standout from VENUES is that they can easily switch between Gruber and Robin Baumann on vocals, but the drummer also deserves a mention, as Dennis Vanhofen thrashed away keeping the momentum going. We would love to see a headline tour from VENUES in the near future. 8/10
Future Palace have released two albums – Escape in 2020 and Run in June 2022 – and this tour would focus mainly on the second album. The three-piece band are from Berlin and are Maria Lessing on vocals, Manuel Kohlert on guitar and Johannes Frenzel on drums. A short audio commentary was played to give the crowd a glimpse of what to expect from the band before the explosive Defeating Gravity; one of their most popular songs, got everyone moving and yet another circle pit while a good proportion of the fans sang back the words. Definitely a knowledgeable audience tonight then! They kept the momentum going with Flames and Locked, two more songs from Run. The band provided some extra entertainment for the fans when they released some balloons into the crowd during A World In Tears.
Around the middle of the set two of the band members left the stage, with Lessing remaining and a keyboard was brought on to the stage as she played and sang a stripped back version of Maybe, the first song that she ever wrote. This was a very emotional part of the set for Lessing and the fans, as the room fell silent and the song began: “I feel so suffocated/All this anger and this hatred/Against my agitator/Acts just like a mind dictator”; very powerful lyrics. Lessing writes from the heart and a few of the songs that were sang tonight refer to an abusive relationship that she was involved in previously.
The set was unfortunately cut by two songs, Roses and Twisted being the ones left out, due to vocalist Lessing recovering from a cold. Fourteen tracks was still a decent length for a set though and all but two numbers from the Run album were played. Future Palace are now on a run of European tour dates but judging from their performance tonight it shouldn’t be too long before they appear on these shores again. 9/10
Written By: Alan Brown
