After Defecto’s go at warming up the crowd at Lygten this cold night, it was time for the second band supporting Boil to go on; this was Broken Hand Charity from Copenhagen.

”Good evening ladies and gentlemen, we are Broken Hand Charity and we have come here to fuck your ears!”
- Kasper Ljung (vocals)

Yes, Broken Hand Charity was another local band, and the fact that they were playing as the second support, and that they had their own backdrop, would indicate that they were a bit bigger than Defecto, but the fact was also that I knew neither of these bands from before and thus came in with as open a mind as one can. Defecto had put me in a good mood, so all Broken Hand Charity had to do was keep me there...
Anyway, to me Broken Hand Charity sounded mostly like a groovy hard rock band with a pinch of metal thrown in for good measure, and that’s pretty much the same thing they describe themselves as on the net as well, so at least I got that one right. They have a demo and an EP released so far, Simplified Symphony and Democrusade (interestingly enough for linguistics, it’s the former, not the latter, that is the demo), Daniel S. Jakobsen and Joachim Sestoft on guitars, Søren Kirchhoff on bass and Heino Jensen on drums.
Their sound has, as far as I can find out, been noticed for their driving guitar work and the special sound of Ljung’s vocals; listening back to them now after the show, I admit these vocals work better on their recorded material than I thought they did at Lygten, which is sad as they took away from the experience for me at the time.
Of the speciality of the guitars I didn’t think much I must admit, as I was mostly taking in the overall feeling and style of the band, and even though the sound was mixed well enough, they didn’t really stick all that much out to my mind...

What did stick out on the other hand was the complete lack of styling of the band – I’m not saying that a band has to have a uniform look (like Boil had later on) to be worth anything, and I try to stay as open-minded as possible for people’s differing tastes, but the ragtag band of Broken Hand Charity was so far removed from thought about dressing up I had a hard time taking it serious. I guess it was the same kind of anti-styling that worked so well back in the day when grunge popped up, but I can’t really see it work now some twenty years later. Wow, listen to me, fashion-guru extraordinaire! Better get back to what I know at least a little bit about, eh?
Well, if the appearance wasn’t really my thing, I’m sad to say that the performance did very little to improve my impression of these guys. Broken Hand Charity was far from as active and entertaining in their demeanour as Defecto had been before them, and in all honesty it was only vocalist Ljung who put any effort into the performance, with the exception of a very small amount of playfulness from Kirchhoff and Jakobsen. Ljung was also the only one in the band really reaching out to grab the crowd, both in his acting (in lack of a better word) and in his little speeches between songs.
Musically there wasn’t much that impressed me either; Broken Hand Charity certainly weren’t bad at playing, but coming on after the much more technical Defecto it was hard to impress me with simple rock riffs. Also, as I already mentioned, Ljung’s vocals weren’t coming off in their best way this evening, the reason for this I will not speculate on.
Until we reached Kiss From A Crow that is, I was quite wowed by the way his vocals suddenly boomed out during the chorus of this song, this was far better than anything I had heard from him during the rest of the gig.
The only one who really impressed me throughout the gig though, was drummer Jensen; he had a great style, both visually and rhythmically, and when I lost interest in what the others were doing I could easily spend some time just watching him beat away on the skins.

If I wasn’t overly impressed by Broken Hand Charity, I can’t rightfully say that there weren’t those who were – the crowd had grown a little since the last band, and it was easy to see that it had grown with the addition of some Broken Hand Charity fans and friends. The fact that they were wearing the bands t-shirt was the first obvious hint of this, but it wasn’t the last.
In general, the crowd had also moved a bit closer to the stage and were a bit more active, which of course was nice to see. It was especially the band-clad fans who were rocking along, but little by little more people got into the headbanging fun and in the end I could actually see how this could work as a support act.
With a nine songs long setlist, Broken Hand Charity had all the opportunity in the world to grab some new fans, and I hope they did...

Broken Hand Charity is, if nothing else, a band that divides the waters, so also here at Metalmoments. As you have probably understood by now, they didn’t exactly turn a fan out of me, but Lunah (Lauridsen, photographer) praised them after the show for what she had seen as a concert with a good energy and a grab on the crowd.
I will also admit that it would be unfair to judge the band solely on this one concert – having now heard their studio material I must admit that it works much better than what the concert did. Still not my taste, but that’s a different matter altogether.

Setlist:

Power Off
When You Fear
In The Nile
Confess
Kiss From A Crow
For Religion
Black Spring
On The Run
Spread Flesh