Amon Amarth @ Fowler’s Live (4/01/08)
Amon played an awesome – and long! – set. For only $55, this was an incredible offering from these magnificent Swedes.
Typically, having rocked up at about eight o’clock to this show, I missed the majority of the first band – sorry dudes! Although I caught the tail-end of the last track, I’m not going to mention anything about them. It’s hardly fair to anyone to review a set based on the final track!
The second band, Order of the Buzzard are a local band. For those of you who might remember In:Extremis, frontman Simon Durrant will be familiar. This band tries to blend thrash with death influences, a bit of grind, and so on, with a ‘modern’ approach. This is fine, but in all honesty they sounded at this show like every other band trying to do the ‘modern’ thing. Don’t get me wrong: they’re talented musicians; but the songwriting sounded lazy (as did the vocal style), and it just didn’t convince me.
The Order of the Buzzard set also felt like it went for too long. By the time twenty minutes had passed, I was a bit over it, and went outside for a smoke instead. I must say that, although the punters were very much of a young age, on average, they didn’t appear to get into it. They paid their respects to the band and supported them, but they weren’t terribly enthusiastic. Perhaps one indication of this is the lack of a circle pit forming, and a greater tendency to mosh, old-style.
Perhaps it was the heat – after all it was a really hot day, and a really hot evening – but Order of the Buzzard played a lethargic sort of set. Maybe next time they’ll convince me that they’re really into what they do.
After a huge break – about forty minutes (time enough for some people to head to Enigma for a cold beer in glass!) – Amon Amarth finally hit the stage. Not only did they hit the stage to wild roars of approval from the punters, but they hit the stage smiling like all f-k! I swear, Amon Amarth are the happiest band I have ever seen play a gig in Adelaide, and it was so refreshing. Naturally, the crowd reacted very well to this display of enjoyment.
I always say this in my reviews, and I’m going to keep saying it: I f-king love Swedish death metal! Australian tours of Swedish death metal bands have never, ever been a disappointment, and Amon Amarth ranks way up there among the best sets I’ve seen. Perhaps most amazingly, the crowd seemed to be comprised of diehard Amon Amarth fans: they knew all the songs, they knew all the albums, they knew all the lyrics.
Vocalist Johan Hegg said to us, “They say people downunder is crazier than anybody else!” and went on to talk about how happy they were to finally get to play in Australia.
Amon Amarth blasted their way through their almost 2-hour set, including Fate of Norns, Thousand Years of Oppression, Masters of War, and many others!
And just to prove how traditionally metal they are, the stage was a whirlwind of windmills for nearly the entire set.
Each band member also had a large animal horn in his belt, from which he supped his beer throughout the set. After exhorting the audience to show their horns, Hegg mentioned the heat, that “I dunno how you stand it,” in response to which, beers were held aloft. “I see, you got beer huh? Well, we raise our horns to you!” And, in possibily the cheesiest thing I have ever seen, the band members all raised their (drinking) horns, and chugged their beer, after a heartily yelled ‘Skol!’.
Of course, the excited punters, possibly misunderstanding the Swedish, started chanting, “scull, scull, scull, scull, scull, scull…” until the Amon Amarth beers were drained to the tip.
What did they receive to replenish their drinks? A standard stubbie of beer. The utter inadequacy of this amount of beer was hardly lost on the punters.
The venue was quite full – perhaps not quite as full as many would have expected for such a band as amon Amarth. However, gigs are always less full at this end of the year, after the incessant holiday partying. But I must say that even though there were perhaps not so many punters numerically, they made up for it for their enthusiasm. Nearly every single person there was there because they really wanted to be there, and that excitement filled the venue as much as an apathetic capacity-crowd.
After two encores at the end of a really superb set, Amon Amarth left the stage and we were all shepherded out. Despite the first two bands, whose styles didn’t really seem to even go near Amon Amarth’s (perhaps that’s the point?), and who were therefore a bit disappointing, it doesn’t seem to matter in retrospect. The glory of viking death metal will outlast us all.
It was an awesome show – perhaps they really do have Odin on their side.
