Orphaned Land had rolled into town with their All Is One tour, and they had brought along no less than three support bands. The first of these to play was a new French alternative/post metal (by their own account) band called The Mars Chronicles. Whether or not the name has anything to do with the Ray Bradbury story is as of yet unconfirmed…

The fact that the band tried to look alien however is not – the four piece consisting of Devy Diadema (vocals/guitar), Morgan Berthet (drums), Sebastian Ollive (bass) and Yann Morvant (guitar) were completely clad in white, sported an all white make-up (also for the hair) and pitch black eye contacts. The effect was quite striking, but would be worth nothing if the band had nothing else to offer, so did they?
Well, the performance wasn’t over the top, but it certainly wasn’t boring either. The guys were mostly staying in their places (fair enough, Beta has a very small stage), but the foot was on the monitor and the eye was directed at the audience, not their toes. On whom exactly was hard to say because of the contacts, but it felt like they were searching for eye-contact.

The Mars Chronicles managed to push six (if I counted correctly) songs through to the audience, but even though Diadema was kind enough to introduce every single one of them by name, the sound of the place made it hard to hear what he actually said.
Even with the loss of titles though, there were still plenty of people to receive their music, a fact that I found impressive considering this being the first band and all – usually people around favour to stay in the bar for the support acts and only show up by the stage when the main act s about to go on, so The Mars Chronicles lucked out on this one, or it could also be that their pull was simply good enough to get people in.
The crowd was mostly calm, however, when Ollive put in an effort in getting the audience to clap their hands to one of the songs it paid off, and the increased activity in the crowd was immediately reflected in the band where especially Diadema cranked it up a bit in the posing department (and you know how we like this!).

I had entered the all expecting nothing really, but I must say that The Mars Chronicles was a very pleasant surprise – they didn’t exactly blow me away, but their chuggy riffs combined with a healthy dose of melody put me in a good mood and made the outlook of the evening seem all the more good. I’m glad that they proved to have more to offer than just a distinctive make-up.