Group: Incantation, Ragnorök, Krisiun, Behemoth
Venue: Tribute (Sandnes, NORWAY)
Date: 2004-11-06
Audience: 150 people
A “Death metal evening” in a little place in West Norway, called Sandnes. The evening kicked of at 10 o’clock. Incantation were the first to play. The Americans play for about half an hour without getting a response from 60% of the audience, while the diehards stood in front of the stage, banging their heads a little bit closer to a life in the wheelchair. To be honest, Incantation aren’t that great, their drummer is hammering on his drums without changing the rhythm for six minutes, the guitar riffs are boring and when they should have had something like a solo or a melodic part in their songs, they are just using the distortion (a mistake many bands do) and their vocalist voice sounds like the voice of a smoker who lost 90% of his lung capacity.
Next to play were Norwegians Ragnorök. They bore most of the audience to death, with their 7-8 minutes lasting songs. Some of the songs sound promising and one of the guitarists is able to play his instrument, but the drummer is horrible and messes up for the rest of the band while the vocalist is shrieking like an 8 year old girl.
Krisiun, the evening’s first highlight, are asking the audience before they play their first song:” Are you ready for some brutal Death metal?”- “YES”, and Krisiun showed in an impressive way why they are regarded as one of the best Death metal bands right now, brutal riffs, thrilling guitar solos, a vocalist who is able to perform all sorts of death vocals, and a drummer who is playing the most thrilling rhythms I’ve ever heard. Highlight of the show was the drummers drum solo which was really incredible and which is impossible to describe with words.
The last band of the evening were Behemoth, who started at 1 o’clock in the night, most of the audience properly pissed, hardly realising that a concert was on, some of the outside to puke, and a bunch of 50 persons who still were alive celebrating the music which was performed on stage. “Behemoth” did nothing less than the audience who still was watching expected them to do: they played brutal riffs, with extremely fast drums that at some points reminded me of industrial metal, and a vocalist who growled deeper than a wolf is ever going to do.
2 o’clock in the morning, a bunch of drunk people standing in front of Tribute in Sandnes, smoking a cigarette, most of the them with smiles on their faces. The last two bands gave the audience that what they had come for: brutal death metal at its very best. Even if the evening started with two bands that people who stand outside of the death metal scene probably never will like, the last two bands were worth the ticket price.