freak_kitchen_2006_03

» Freak Kitchen 2006 03 03

Reviewed by Thomas
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City: Borås, Sweden
Venue: Trägårn
Date: 03 March 2006
Freak Kitchen set length: 90 minutes

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Freak Kitchen

After a short tour in India and playing at The Great Indian Rock Festival, Freak Kitchen was back in Sweden to give a concert in the town of Borås. Borås is a small town located approximately fifty kilometers outside of the city of Gothenburg on the Swedish west-coast. Guitarist IA says despite the difference of playing in a sports hall in India and in front a couple of hundreds in the small town of Borås it feels equally great to be on stage and further great to be home in Sweden. The stage was really small and from where I were standing I couldn't even see Björn Fryklund behind the drums as the stage was going into the wall instead of shooting out from it, and there was not much room for the guys to move around on.

Freak Kitchen got to be one of the most amusing bands in the world and with small means and a blabbering mouth, Mattias "IA" Eklundh entertains an audience not only with his playing. Moreover, it doesn't make much sense what he is saying when he is yakking on, but it is funny and you laugh, and you laugh a lot. They played a mixture of songs where the most represented album was their latest Organic which was released almost a year ago and the heavy track Speak When Spoken To really does the trick live. The smart and melodic hard rock with some awesome guitar playing and a brilliant performance from these three guys make it of no real significance which songs they are playing. Even if some songs can be lifeless and none-saying on album, they come to life on stage and you simply take in all of what they are playing.

The guys did a good job keeping the spirits up and while they are goofing around on stage their performance and musical skills are still top notch. Freak Kitchen is such a tight trio that it is impressive to behold and they all have their place in the band but it is IA's guitar work that is something very special. They did not however seem to be one hundred percent focused this time but most of the crowd seemed to enjoy the concert as much as the band. Christer Örtefors on bass, who apart from handling backing vocals took over the microphone on the songs Razor Flowers and Infidelity Ghost, showed that he as well as IA is a good vocalist. The highlights were for me the more catchy songs in Porno Daddy, Nobody's Laughing Here and the heavier tracks Speak When Spoken To and Silence, although you never get a bad song from Freak Kitchen live.

In some sense this was an ordinary concert, and with Freak Kitchen that is something out of the ordinary. As IA said, he was trying to cut down on the chopsticks and bull-dicks and he had no gadgets what so ever with him this evening. No dildos, no string-less guitar, no nothing and that felt a little boring because it is with those things they really go over the top. His amazing guitar playing alone gets you to the top but the gadgets put an extra dimension to the gigs with Freak Kitchen.

7 chalices of 10

(sorry, no setlist)