The second day of the festival had us all relocate to the bigger venue at USF Verftet, placed right on the waterside, which makes for a really good and picturesque setting for a metal festival. In a somewhat smart move, the organizers had put Taake up as the opening act of the day. This probably had more people showing up than what is usual as early as 6PM. The band showcasing a new drummer, and Hoest also having adopted a new stage persona in recent times, made this somewhat fresh, even to us locals. He has gone from the more antisocial approach to the more introverted and mysterious approach of the hooded character based heavily on the skull figure that has been part of Taake for the last ten years or so. When thinking about it, he has taken the part he played in Helheim’s ‘Dualitet og Ulver’ video and made it part of the Taake show. As usual he also has great fun doing the misheard lyrics thing, where he both says different stuff than on record, but also changes the lyrics completely at some points. So one gets an extra treat if one listens closely – and is fluent enough in Norwegian. After having churned out ‘Bjoergvin IV’, ‘Doedkvad I’, and ‘Umenneske’, Hoest laconically states some humorous, although somewhat sarcastic stuff in Norwegian, before they continue with ‘Norbundet’, Hoest being able to chug down an entire bottle of red wine during their somewhat short set.
Right after Taake it’s time for fellow Bergensian band Sahg, playing in the smaller venue upstairs. They do indeed play in front of a much smaller audience, but the some three hundred people present are served a fireworks of musicianship, good songs and stage presence. Frontman Olav even cockily stating: “I will do this in Norwegian, but the lyrics will be in English, so you can all sing along, like you planned to.” And we are presented with all the hits: ‘Firechild’, ‘Godless Faith’, ‘Pyromancer’ etc.
Going from these two great performances and into Tiamat was actually a bit disappointing. To point that out; I love Tiamat, but seeing them on such a big stage, this apathetic … It was extremely disappointing in terms of atmosphere. Sure, it got better when they played the classics like ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Cain’ and ‘Whatever That Hurts’, but this is nothing like the performance they put on in Oslo during Inferno some years back. Maybe it was simply too early and too bright lighting in the venue for this?
After the slow interlude that was Tiamat, I ran upstairs to catch some of Exumer. They were quite brilliantly summed up by one of my friends: “This is like the works team version of Slayer.” And that really seems sufficient when it comes to Exumer.
Marduk never gets boring, right? Well, they are the epitome of generic black metal at times, and this time they were even late on stage. Let that be said, their old material is actually somewhat more entertaining, before they seemed to have grown satisfied with recording material of a fixed template. They do an OK performance, and one can enjoy songs like ‘Christraping Black Metal’, ‘Burn My Coffin’ and ‘Materialized In Stone’, but it never gets to be awfully exciting, at least not to spoiled Norwegians.
The late onstage appearance of Marduk also made me miss almost all of Ragnarok, that I only caught thanking the audience before going off stage.
Well, at least the next band up was the mighty Triptykon, fronted by living legend Tom G Warrior of Celtic Frost fame. Seeing as the band starts off with ‘Procreation Of The Wicked’, it really can’t go wrong, can it now? Well, since they play all the Celtic Frost classics as if they were funeral doom, they indeed can. ‘Circle Of The Tyrants’ is epic stuff, but not at a halting tempo. Triptykon needs to understand that Celtic Frost and Triptykon are different things, and that the old Celtic Frost material is supposed to be up-tempo.
At least it helps to walk upstairs and catch an actual doom band,a band that is supposed to play at a doomy tempo. Swallow The Sun have arrived all the way from Finland to play thirty five minutes of epic and gloomy doom. However, as they found out, things don’t always turn out the way one wants them to. The airline Norwegian managed to lose their equipment somehow, so they were forced to borrow instruments from other bands. This didn’t affect their performance at all, and they did a mighty fine job., if I’m to say so.
The main headliner this Friday was Hypocrisy, actually playing their first show in Bergen ever, which seems even more amazing considering the fact that they have a Norwegian drummer in their ranks, Horgh (Immortal), and have had him in the fold for ages now. As with Triptykon, the sound seems a bit low in volume, and it never really turns into the mighty onslaught one would imagine a band such as Hypocrisy would be able to put on. At least I had my first ever experience of ‘Roswell 47’ in a live setting, which surely counts for something.
Something quite the opposite is to be said of Anaal Nathrakh that were headlining the small stage, the Studio stage. They did of course have the festivals crappiest sound, hands down. It was almost completely indecipherable actually. Yet, somehow they managed to pull off one of the better performances. There were people pulled on stage, some girl with dreads crowd surfing through most of their set, and a crazy moshpit going on. Dave Hunt, their vocalist, was also funny and misanthropic as usual, and it helps having songs like ‘Do Not Speak’, ‘Forging Towards The Sunset’ and ‘Between Shit And Piss We Are Born’ in any set list.
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Words: Pål Lystrup
Photos: StiPa Photography