This Saturday evening, Empyre delivered a classy acoustic set in the most special of settings. How many of you can say that you have attended a rock concert, albeit an acoustic one, in a church? Well, this writer can.
Empyre – Harry Pane
Kettering Arts Centre – 12 October 2024
Words And Photography: Bogdan Bele
Empyre have chosen the Kettering Arts Centre for this acoustic show. When it’s not the Kettering Arts Centre, hosting concerts and other events, the location doubles as St Andrew’s Church. It’s not the first time they do it. The band has played in this location a couple more times in recent years, and the performances even resulted in the recording of their Live & Unplugged CD, released earlier this year. 
Tonight’s show is a celebration of said album, which, together with their most recent studio effort, Relentless, is very worth checking out. This is what brings us all to the church with a bar, as Empyre frontman and guitarist Henrik Steenholdt calls it.
It’s a sold-out show, with a crowd of all ages and even hailing from multiple countries. It even includes two very young Empyre fans enjoying their first ever gig, both in junior vibe killer t-shirts. An example of great parenting right there.
The band goes on at 9 PM on the dot and does not waste time killing the respective vibe. Empyre’s humour aside, they get straight into Relentless, the title track of their most recent studio effort. This has a different arrangement, which they call ’80s Relentless, with lead guitarist Did Coles playing a tasteful keyboard part.
The set continues with the pacier Cut To The Core and Just A Ride, before going into a haunting version of fan-favourite Too Close, with an impressive vocal performance from Henrik Steenholdt. If you have not listened to Empyre before, this song is your chance to discover one of the best vocalists you have never heard.
Driven by a great bass line by bassist Grant Hockley, Your Whole Life Slows continues in a similar dark vein. So does My Bad, again with Did Coles on piano with, appropriately, a beer resting on it.
Empyre prove tonight that they are very good at taking their audience through a number of mostly melancholic feelings and states. Letting yourself travel along with their moody brand of atmospheric rock, sometimes with a heavier edge, other times with progressive elements, is not very hard to do. This is in complete and utter contrast with the very funny between-song banter.
The fact that, as they mention, people chose this show over Strictly Come Dancing on TV must mean they are doing something right.
The meditative songs, all sounding huge with the help of the room’s exceptional acoustics, come one after the other, interspersed with tracks like the funky Drive and an excellent cover of Titanium. Yes, that David Guetta song, with a completely different approach.
There is something for everyone in tonight’s set, including a double punch of the riffy Homegrown and New Republic. Both make the church ceiling reverberate. The former, “the most inappropriate song to be played in a church” because of its lyrics, also brings with it an impressive performance from drummer Elliot Bale.
As the set comes towards a close, we get a different-from-the-album version of Hit & Run, one of Relentless’ singles, as well as Stone, dedicated to the young gig goers mentioned earlier.
It all comes full circle with Only Way Out. What better way than a track starting with vocals, piano and guitar and ending powerfully, with the rhythm section joining halfway through? A great way to end a great evening.
Empyre say that they expect boos rather than applause. However, performances like this one will make it increasingly hard for audiences to deliver said boos. They are one of those bands that have the tools to play in much bigger places.
Not that there’s anything wrong with intimate gigs. They have two more acoustic shows scheduled in London at the start of next year, for that matter, as well as a headline tour later next year.
“It’s hard to believe this is our first-ever headline tour,” Frontman Henrik Steenholdt told us. “After selling out shows for the past 18 months, we’re excited to finally hit the road for a string of dates.
“We’re playing cities we have not visited in years, some new venues and, for the most part, places we’ve never headlined. So we can’t wait.”
Harry Pane
Opening the show was a singer-songwriter with a name somewhat reminiscent of the one of someone famous for completely different reasons altogether. Name similarities aside, Harry Pane has done a great job opening the evening’s proceedings.
Alone on the stage with his acoustic guitar, his heartfelt delivery definitely hit a chord (pun intended) with the audience. He also tried to find out what would happen if an inappropriate-for-the-location song were played.
This time, the song is about gambling and horse racing, but as in Empyre’s case, all ends well. The last song, and my personal highlight of Harry’s set, is the bluesy Mama, with some great bottleneck playing.
Harry Pane is a very good opener for the show. He does ask at one point whether everyone was looking forward to seeing Empyre. The “they’re alright…” answer, promptly coming from the audience, only goes to show that this evening’s headliner’s audience is no stranger to the same brand of sense of humour they have.
