Despite the sweet hot sunshine beating down on the Edison lot, Vallenfyre seemed to bring their own cloud of heaviness with them for this lugubrious, crushing set. The side project of Paradise Lost's frontman/guitarist Gregor Mackintosh, Vallenfyre is a band forged in misery, founded in response to the death of Mackintosh's father in 2009. Though the band has become a creative force in its own right in the intervening years, the sense of mourning still clings to every aspect of their sound, an aural memento mori.
The dry, acerbic wit of Mackintosh (who claimed that when the founded the band his dream was always to play a "parking lot in Baltimore," and mentioning the scary demons in their latest video) was often juxtaposed against the wintery ache of songs like "Bereft," which was both painful and beautiful.
The dry, acerbic wit of Mackintosh (who claimed that when the founded the band his dream was always to play a "parking lot in Baltimore," and mentioning the scary demons in their latest video) was often juxtaposed against the wintery ache of songs like "Bereft," which was both painful and beautiful.