Anna von Hausswolff at the NCH review: Mosh-pit Enya plays a mesmerising first Dublin concert

Anna von Hausswolff

National Concert Hall, Dublin★★★★☆

How fitting that Anna von Hausswolff should deliver her mesmerising first concert in Dublin as European leaders gather in the capital to take stock of a world facing dark times and turmoil.

Dark times and turmoil are themes that ripple through von Hausswolff’s latest album, Iconoclasts – a record informed by, among other things, the Swedish folk-metal singer’s experience of being labelled a Satan worshipper by far-right French Catholics when she tried to stage a show in a church in 2021.

That experience was the jumping-off point for Iconoclasts’ ruminations on the conflicts roiling the world, although the tempestuous collection of gothic pop songs ultimately finds her stepping into the light and believing things can get better.

Von Hausswolff observes that same ritualistic journey from shadow to catharsis at the NCH, where she arrives on Wednesday night looking as if she means business, in a heavy-metal hoodie and baseball cap, flanked by two drummers, a saxophone player and a duo of guitarists.

She cuts a slight figure, yet when she shrieks the opening line of Facing Atlas she is revealed to be a mosh-pit Enya. Her music is both otherworldly and the kind of thing that makes you want to jump around and bump into strangers.

The music has much the same effect on von Hausswolff, who emerges from behind her keyboard and walks to the front of the stage. Here she throws her head back as if having an out-of-body experience, her voice as huge and ancient as an oak forest. You half expect her to start levitating like the kid obsessed with Kate Bush in Stranger Things.

There isn’t always a lot of room for subtlety in the music of an artist who initially became known for giving performances on 19h-century church organs and whose collaborators run from the drone duo Sunn O))) to the death-metal band Wolves in the Throne Room. But she shows a more vulnerable side on a new song written for a friend going through tough times.

[ Anna von Hausswolff: ‘A right-wing party wanted to gain Catholic votes. They used me as a tool’Opens in new window ]

Confessional turns to headbanging as the gig then swerves into Wagnerian funk on Struggle with the Beast, her final song of the evening. Von Hausswolff bops at her keyboard while her sax player summons the sort of protean groove that might well call Cthulhu up from the depths.

It feels as if the world has ended. But then the house lights go up and everyone piles out into the hall, where von Hausswolff will be signing vinyl at the merch stall. From darkness to light, the ritual is complete.