In Solitude from Sweden didn’t exactly rock my socks off at our last encounter, but they showed enough potential to at least earn them the opening spot on our fourth musical day at Metaldays.

“The weather is not so good, so we’ll try and make up for it with music.”
- Pelle Åhman (vocals)

‘Tis true what he said, the sky was bleak and dreary to behold, but somehow this fit the mood of the band like a glove.
Being our first concert of the day, we of course managed to arrive a bit late, but found our way to the front far easier than we had dreaded. For some reason, In Solitude hadn’t pulled much of a crowd at all, and those few souls that had shown up stood quite still, calmly nodding their heads to the music. A few were dancing slowly, but each and every one of them were doing so with themselves. Enthusiasm might as well have been a village on the Siberian tundra for all these people cared.

It wasn’t for lack of trying from the bands side though – Pelle Åhman did his part as frontman, and tried his best to put some supportive comments in between songs, and during the songs it was him and his brother, bassist Gottfrid Åhman, who did the strongest job with performing. Pelle Åhman reeled around on the stage, entangling his mic-stand in more and more wires, and Gottfrid Åhman was moving about quite much as well as he tried his best to fire up the audience.
Guitarists Niklas Lindström and Henrik Palm did headbang a bit, but held very close to their own spots all the time, and Uno Bruniusson played his instrument well enough but other than that didn’t bother to try and stick out in any way.

“This makes me very, very, very happy! Thanks for coming out!”
- Pelle Åhman (vocals)

Despite the fitting weather and what I can only admit to being a stronger performance than the last time around, In Solitude still didn’t manage to get under my skin. There is still potential here, but I doubt they’ll manage to win me over if they continue on this set path.