I thought this Romanian act had been doing some good business lately, with a lot of media attention and press coverage… So how come they were scheduled so early on the rooster? Strange…
Whether it was due to the sound engineers not having properly warmed up their ears or if it was the band’s fault in any way, I don’t know, but
the sound was quite empty and only minimally decent if you were really close to the stage. Especially from a band with no less than 7 people on stage, I was expecting something much more invading. But with the keyboard very low in the mix and the extra percussion (provided by Thelemnar, from Secrets of the Moon) hardly ever audible, it didn’t really live up to my expectations. Besides that, the occasional panpipes and flute sounded quite untuned comparing to the rest of the music, and the drummer was hitting the snare as if it were made of porcelain. But of course it wasn’t totally bad. I mean, N.B. have good songs – perhaps a bit too stretched for live shows though – and they sure know how to create an original, melodic and somber atmosphere.
The audience didn’t seem too moved, and the end applause (consisting of a mere soft clapping of hands) proved that a big name and a big arsenal of instruments doesn’t
necessarily make for a good gig.
It was time for a quick glimpse downstairs at John Dee, where
Episode 13 was playing. Both the vocalist and the bassist had corpsepaint. The vocalist looked quite silly with his short hair combined with his Marilyn Manson-like fragile body, wrapped in random pieces of toilet paper. [Mental Note: toilet paper definitely is NOT evil!] These visual aspects aside, I must say the music was pretty ok: depressive Black Metal like early Forgotten Tomb, with simple and efficient riffs. Still, nothing astonishing; just mediocre. I actually just found out they come from Turkey…
Kampfar’s performance seemed to be one the audience was looking forward to. Can’t say I shared the same enthusiasm though; I never understood the big fuss about this band. The act’s intro was pretty intense nonetheless, and turned literally bombastic when the band came onstage. The stage’s background image created a good vibe to
the whole, and I must say the new Kampfar songs actually sound minimally interesting! In terms of being at ease, the performance was pretty good, and the audience responded duly. And this is about as far as I get with positive remarks towards Kampfar. Non plus ultra! For what is wrong with this pathetic frontman?? This fucking ego tripper with his naked torso, showing off the time he spent in the gym preparing for this performance! Hahaha, I don’t fucking believe this shit! As one of the only bands able to blend extreme Metal with a beauty contest, Kampfar sure is original! It’s obvious this show is all about the guys’ six-pack. But that’s just not what I came here to see, and with me, many others I’m sure! Maybe he should consider forming a boys-band instead, and take his attitude to a scene with less depth and meaning!
My spirit was getting low after this pathetic display. I needed beer and some REAL Metal to compensate, and so I went down again to check on the Satanic Death Metal of
Azarath.
Reminding of the likes of Centurian, Nox and of Polish hordes like Damnation and Hell-Born, Azarath brought forth a straightforward heavy mass of brutality onto the crowd. The vocals were good and imposing, the guitars technical and the drumming very fast. The sound, heavy as fuck!
Next on:
The Battalion! Not to mix with other existing Battalions, these Norwegian bastards thrash you to death! They didn’t let me down when I saw them for the first time, and they didn’t fail on me now. I can be short about it: it was a great performance! Ugly Thrash Metal up your spine! Everybody digs this shit!
Ramesses and
their heavy Stoner Doom Metal didn’t have a big impact on me. I remember the drummer had a veeery big ride cymbal, like nothing I had ever seen before. And I’m afraid that’s about all I can tell you about this performance, eheh!
Luckily, with
Septic Flesh setting foot on the big stage, everything changed. My a
ttending Inferno Festival this year proved already worthy after this act alone, and it came totally out of the blue! Not that I didn’t know or like Septic Flesh previously, but I just wasn’t ready for this! It’s one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen! Massive in every possible sense! A great performance, a great sound, the audience was absolutely smashed!! The music was amazingly dark and brutal! It became clear I hadn’t been paying proper attention to this band lately! I hope I’m still in time for redemption! Aaaaargh!!!
Apparently I missed out
Unearthly Trance. I guess I was still in an unearthly Septic Flesh trance… And you know what? From now on I’ll stop mentioning the bands that I didn’t see, as I just realized there’s no real point in mentioning ‘em, is there now?
Moving on.
I thought wit
nessing
Pestilence live for the first time after having known the band already for almost two decades, would be something at least promising, even after a show like Septic Flesh’s! But I’m afraid it was only very disappointing. A lot of expectations build up during such a period of time, as you can imagine! Fifteen years these guys have been hibernating, fifteen years! To have only four days of rehearsal before finally getting on the road again?!! Well, one could tell from all the flaws during the gig – yet only noticeable if one knew the songs by heart, let’s be honest… Clearly I was not the only disappointed one. Everybody I spoke with afterwards shared more or less the same opinion about this comeback. And what is it with the white-trash jogging outfit of vocalist/guitarist Patrick Mameli? It looked as if he had just stepped out of be
d on a Sunday morning, ready to sag on the couch to check on an unimportant football match. The repertoire consisted of a couple of songs from
Consuming Impulse,
Testimony of the Ancients (from which a highlight in “The Secrecies of Horror”), one of
Spheres, a couple of new ones and “Out of the Body” as Zugabe. Not much more to say here, except some large credits to the virtuoso bass-player Tony Choy who deservingly stole the entire show!
The second day of the festival started out with a hangover and a subsequent desperate attempt of getting some edible food from the barbecue stand at the venue itself. We were served half raw meat by what could only be two juvenile delinquents. Preparing food was obviously not something these young sociopath ex-cons had been trained for, and I still don’t know whether the blood dribbling from my piece of meat belonged to the meat or to the guy’s half bandaged festering pus-finger. Mm mmm!
The first gig we saw today was
Dew-Scented. Uninteresting Hardcore kind of stuff. Nothing I enjoyed really, and I think the same goes for the still dormant audience.
Next on the bill was
Krypt - which is pretty much the same band as Tsjuder as far as I’m concerned - and just like Tsjuder, this is a band that – like we say it in Portuguese – neither warms me up nor cools me down. It just sounds like plain mediocre and boring Black Metal. However standard music it may be, the sound was good, the performance tight, and John Dee very crowded.
Meanwhile the big stage upstairs had welcomed
Vreid. From the ashes of Windir, Vreid arose s
ome years ago as a Norwegian nationalistic Black Metal-sounding band. When I say nationalistic, I mean it in an anti nazi-occupation, pro-Norwegian perspective. Right winged and politically correct at the same time! How about that huh? This whole idea, along with the typical WW i
magery (projected background) you’d expect from such a band live, actually reminded me very much of Loits. In fact, even the sound did. The music was cool and catchy. Sober but contagious. Together with some huge roaring flames on the stage and some awesome live violin parts, Vreid gave away a good show that left the audience content and awake.
Back to John Dee I went, where there was a band playing tight, a bit melodic Black Metal (without corpsepaint). It was
Pantheon I. There was a good atmosphere to it and the audience seemed to like these dudes. Unfortunately the sound of the cello was pretty low, but as compensation, the chick playing it was banging her head a lot. Over and out.
Another big and positive surprise for me was the Finnish band
Swall
ow the Sun. It proved to be a very good band, playing a heavy atmospheric doomy Metal. The music was very accessible and played tightly, and the band’s posture on stage was one of high professionalism. Further credits go out to the drummer, who played in a very controlled manner, showing great technical skills, yet without getting pretentious.
I’ve seen
Root before, and I still feel the same way about it: I just can’t take it seriously. The way how this tattooed grandpa stands the
re, citing lyrics from a huge fairytale-like book with this grave voice and trying to look as to scare off a bunch of kids is just too childish for me, if not pathetic. At the same time I must reward the fact that the guy seems to put his soul totally into the performance and the rest of the band makes for a solid act too. Some of the songs have a certain potential and are pretty ok, but the majority of the riffs won’t be haunting me for long. No real highlights to point out here…
While
Kee
p of Kalessin was about to conquer the stage, the crowd was multiplying like a swarm of rats. Rats and a lot of pussy! It looked as if all the chicks wanted to get a glimpse of them pretty boys…
The stage looked great with the imposing background, and even though at the beginning the sound seemed to lac
k something, it turned out to be one Hell of a bombastic spectacle! Keep of Kalessin has become a very professional band during the years, showing great ease at performing live, energetically walking from one side of the stage to the other. Drummer Vyl also provided a great show on his own. As drummer, this guy is definitely a titan. I haven’t seen many drummers playing as fast and at ease at the same time as this guy. Truly amazing! This band surely has spawned some high-quality musicians! I just can’t seem to figure out how this band manages to create such a massive wall of sound with only ONE guitar. Could there perhaps be some playback involved??
I felt I had seen enough for one day. At the same time, it was a good opportunity to show just how much I appreciate Christianity, by missing out tonight’s headliners
Paradise Lost. It was about time to hit the road, meet some friends and start off a monumental alcoholic journey at Rock In. A remarkable bestial night that resulted in a decrepit zombie-mode stray from a 4-star hotel back to our own worn-out hotel room on the other side of town, at about 11h in the morning. I remember saying I would not go to sleep that day…
About seven hours later I woke up from a deep coma, just in time to check out
Koldbrann bla
sting off a sea of decibels at Rockefeller. Two years ago they performed at the small stage downstairs, but in the meantime they seem to have earned their way to the big stage. Once more, Koldbrann set off a strong and hateful gig, with a compact sound and powerful aggressive vocals. At some point Niklas
Kvarforth came on stage, rotten as ever (yet more fat than ever before!), holding a burning inverted cross. He sang along with Mannevond during one song in his typical hysterical and grave voice, after which he embarrassingly failed to do some fire breathing. Still, the audience – a large turnout - didn’t seem too affected by this idiotic act, and maintained its enthusiasm all the way through the gig.
There seems to be a small gap here (missed out one or two bands), but the next band I saw this day was
Helheim, a band that could never let me down. Their set was played pretty much in perfection. A lot of newer songs could be heard, but the audience was also offered on some songs from
Blod og Ild and from Helheim’s debut milestone
Jormundgand. Not that the audience deserved it really (except for me and the rest of the crew of course – we got completely berserk! And that’s also why there weren’t taken any pictures of this gig)… Frontman V’gandr soon got pretty annoyed by the overall lack of energy coming from the crowd. When even after asking “Was there too much alcohol involved yesterday?” he did not get any answer, it was time to treat this bunch of wussies to a rain of beer. Despite the lousy audience, Helheim set off a tough gig, and once more I can only hail this band! Lots of credits also go out to Hrymr for his great performance and unique drumming style!
With their blend of Industrial, Thrash and Gothic,
Black Comedy is definitely not my cup of tea. It somehow reminded me of White Zombie with a bit more groove and a gothic image. The sound was pretty ok I guess, some interesting rhythm changes here and there, but still… Troll was coming up anyway, so up we went again.
I really had mixed expect
ations towards this act. I knew some good old songs from
Troll, but the impact had never been too big really. From what I witnessed today, it became clear that some things are supposed to stay buried in the past. I can’t imagine Troll’s resurrection for this one exclusive gig did the band any good.
There they stood with their stupid corpsepaint on the big stage… To be honest, I think they didn’t even deserve the small stage. What a shitty band, what a shitty performance! You can forget any “true” spirit surrounding this band!
I went for a quick glimpse downstairs, where the Swedish trio of
Grand M
agus was performing some Heavy/Doom Metal, but didn’t like it enough to stay there more than a couple of minutes. Instead, I used my time to have a chat with Gorgoroth’s ex-drummer E. Erichsen about his workings on some literature. Apparently he recently released a book on Norwegian Satanism called
Nasjonalsatanisten (by now only available in Norwegian tongue), and was preparing his sophomore, this time about women. More specifically, about women from a Baudelairean perspective – a feast for masochistic feminists I’m sure, eheh!
A contagious beat a
nd a typical sound warned me that
Samael’s gig had commenced. Just as I expected, it ended up being an energetic (hail Masmiseim!), solid and smooth gig, and it sure was good to see that Samael went back to a more Black Metallish approach on their latest album.
It’s no secret that Samael owes a large deal of its success to the older works; I’ve seen Vorph’s disappointed face before, while confronted by this at a live gig. Having apparently learned a lesson from this, besides introducing a couple of new songs from
Reign of Light and
Above (like “Illumination”), Samael also played a good dose of material from
Ceremony of Opposites and
Passage, to clear consent of the audience.
There’s only one thing that started to annoy me at this gig, and that’s the lack of real drums. Xytras just kept on switching on and off between his synthesizer and the electronic drum kit. And at the end it just started to get on my nerves. Everything would get so much better with real drums and the keyboards set on playback instead…
One thing was for sure: I didn’t intend to miss a single second of Code
performing.
Long before the gig started I was already preparing my battleground at John Dee. Truth is, in my frenzy that followed, I ended up not seeing much of the gig itself, even though I was righ
t in front of the stage. It was a great and explosive gig, and a meaningful as well! It was the first time the new album would be presented live, and also the first time Vicotnik was back in the live line-up after a long while!
All but one song from the new masterpiece
Resplendent Grotesque were played, and also a few older unavoidable neck-breakers like “The Cotton Optic” and “Aeon in Cinders”. All songs were played very smoothly, Kvohst did a great job with his varied, lamenting vocals, and it was a true feast to see Vicotnik’s bass skills live in action. At the end of the gig I found myself surrounded by broken carcasses, shredded scalps and smashed-out teeth, while my feet were dragging through a carpet of human blood. I had killed everybody around me.
Or, at least it felt like that.
In reality, I was surrounded by angry, complaining faces, and my feet were soaked from all the beer I helped spill. And what better way of ending a killer concert? Angry faces means there was a good pit! To come to think of it, it was actually great that this gig was kept for the end… I was broken. From then on it would be either home or hospital.
Ah, before I forget, there was supposed to be a headliner after this.
I remember vaguely trying to find my way through a sea of people and seeing a bunch of horrible chicks on the stage wearing gasmasks and strap-on dildos, and a guy in diapers, covered with excrements. I guess that mu
st’ve been
Carpathian Forest then… Well, don’t I feel miserable for having missed out most of that bondage party! Poor me.
And thus Inferno 2009 came to an end.
Whether it was due to the economic recession (outside of Norway, since for Norwegians there is - of course - no crisis), or if the line-up wasn’t appealing enough for a lot of people, I don’t know, but I noticed that this year the festival didn’t sell-out.
Still, irrespective of whatever crisis may strike upon us, Inferno can count me in for 2010!
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Written by Vipicirilhitifidi 2009 A.Y.P.S.
anned by the coldness of a frozen Sognsvann and its surrounding snow, and the revitalizing force of a fine bottle of whisky.
