At last, we in Adelaide got to see the long-awaited Marduk playing in our own town. A more anticipated show there has hardly been, despite the international plenty we’ve seen so far this year.
With the doors opening at 7 pm at Fowler’s Live, and it not being an all-ages show, I was surprised to turn up just prior to 7.30 pm and be told, ‘if you’re reviewing this show, love, then you better get in there or you’ll miss the first band’. An early show indeed! People at the bar were bitching about how the show was supposed to be finished by just after 11 pm. So, thinking I was inordinately late, I ran into the next room to be confronted by the hooded Iciclan, belting out black metal, Tasmanian-style, in quite an empty room.
For such an isolated place, or maybe because of its isolation, Tasmania has some really awesome bands. I’d never heard Iciclan prior to this show and, like many punters, vaguely wondered where they were from and what they’d be like. Well, they were very f-kng good. It is a shame Iciclan didn’t get the opportunity to play to a crowd: one of the legacies of being on stage so early in the night. This band plays melodic black metal, reminiscent of both Dark Throne and Swordmaster. Although their simple, yet effective hoods tended to obscure their faces from view, they appeared to be rather a young band; young enough to not command a huge presence on stage. I fear that perhaps they didn’t feel like they played a particularly good set: the applause or cheers were a bit thin—which I put down to the size of the ‘crowd’ rather than to the ability of the band or their music—and as such were a bit self-deprecating. Well, Iciclan, you fellas are great, so you didn’t need to be self-effacing like you were.
Western Australian band The Furor were next up, an arrangement that surprised some who might have thought that locals Darklord would play next. Although The Furor has played in Adelaide quite a bit over the past year or so, I have never managed to catch them. A three-piece black metal act, The Furor’s drummer is also their vocalist. Although the drummer couldn’t hear himself in the foldback, and although the bass wasn’t quite loud enough, this band played a great set. What is surprising about them is that they manage to play in such a way that it feels like they put on a great show without really interacting much with the crowd. And what a crowd! By the time they took to the stage, there room was considerably full. The Furor’s drummer had two drumsticks go awry during the set—some in the audience were counting: ‘whoop – there goes the second one!’. The set that this band played gave us a taste of their forthcoming album, and if their recordings are half as good as their stage performance, it ought to be fantastic. They play a brutal, polished black metal that is so good it’s almost foreign.
Local SA act Darklord were up next, with epic intros and their crushing, furious, almost inhuman black metal. It seemed, with the way the lineup was structured, that the gig got blacker and more brutal as the night went on, if that’s possible. Darklord’s storm of black metal furiousness was the highlight of the supports. I even heard some claim that Darklord played a better set than Marduk! One of the great things about Darklord is that because they rarely play gigs, each live set seems shitloads better than any previous ones. From the chunky to the delicate, the set was full on from start to finish. And it must have been good because all you could hear from the crowd were yells of ‘fuck yeah!’ all the way through.
And finally the long-awaited Marduk hit the stage. Although the room wasn’t packed like one might have expected for such a huge band, the crowd was enthusiastic, waiting with baited breath for the headliners to get into their set, and went nuts when they did. With their militaristic, satanic black metal, Marduk’s set marched into being, their new drummer Lars being welcomed by Adelaide at the encouragement of Mortuus. A couple of tracks in, there was an unexplained exit at stage right of Mortuus and Morgan. For ages. Long enough for people to start murming and yelling ‘what the fuck?’ This mysterious halt to proceedings lasted for maybe five minutes before the band members came back out and the show went on.
As may be expected, given Marduk’s tour was to promote their latest album Rom 5:12, they played a lot of tracks from this album, Womb of Perishableness and the title track among them. They also played enough old material to keep the punters happy, finally towards the end of the set, obliging with tracks from the brilliant Panzer album.
It was all fantastic, the crowd went off. Fists in the air, horns straining at the ends of arms. Heads banging left and right. It’s when a crowd is yelling ‘Oi! Oi! Oi!’ with fists thrust in the air, that you really know they’re enjoying themselves, that you know a band is really hitting the mark. Marduk played a brilliant set, and I hope they found the struggle to get into the country worth it.
The only downfall was the lack of encore at the end of the show. Despite a crowd screaming for an encore, yelling their hardest in a manner which is rare in this town, especially where black metal’s concerned, there was no encore; and I suspect that it’s the venue’s fault. Band left the stage, venue lights came up straight away. If you have a band like Marduk, that had trouble getting into the country for a start; and you have a crowd screaming their lungs out for an encore for longer than usual; and if that crowd is of a type that it’s rare for them to really scream their hearts out for an encore; then maybe that band, more than any other, deserves to play one.
All the bands on this bill ought to be proud of themselves because the night was awesome; all the bands were brilliant. And a big thank you and shout out to Marduk and Just Say Rock: well done for defying the authorities and bringing this brutal show to our stages, because this show was the black metal gig of the year.
