Livebericht Amon Amarth

Ein Livebericht von Shurik aus Tel-Aviv (Barby) - 14.08.2003 (38671 mal gelesen)

I waited for this show for a long-long time, it was originally announced somewhere in the beginning of the year but was postponed twice and I already started to think that it will be cancelled due to "vocalist's throat illness" (reason that Cradle Of Filth chose) or something like this. But my fears were in vain and yesterday I witnessed the great event which is Amon Amarth live.

I'll start with bad things. First of all Barby isn't a place for metal concerts, it's too small, has bad acoustics and no place to mosh. But for some unknown reasons promoters keep on bringing Israeli and foreign bands there, when there are many suitable places for metal concerts in Tel Aviv and surrounding cities or in Haifa. There were many problems during Amon Amarth show because of it - most of them because over-enthusiastic crowd started to mosh extremely hard and owners of the club wanted to stop the concert if the moshing will not stop. I can't blame them for this because moshing in such a place will end tragicly someday ...

Second bad thing is a warm-up bands. First band was Israeli band Solitary - pretty nice attempt to sound like In Flames or Dark Tranquility, nice music but IMO not good as Nail Within for example, which could do the job much better. They played for 30-40 minutes, as I said it was pretty nice but nothing special.

Second band was Belgian grindcore band Leng Tche - and I don't have enough bad words for the one who came up with the idea to bring this crap as supporting act to Amon Amarth. Imagine yourself Rhapsody with S.O.D. as supporting act - this is what it sounded like. The band played standart grindcore, somewhat funny in first 10 minutes but totally annoying in next 30, I don't know what were they singing about because singer sounded like cat being castrated. he did announced the songnames but I don't remember them either and I don't think they matter much because every song sounded the same to me. I didn't counted how many songs did they play but it was smth like 20 or 30, some of them less than 1 minute long, some of them longer which is probably concidered an epic songs in grindcore terminology ... I never liked grindcore, it always made me laugh and after hearing it live I don't like even more.

And now to good thing - AMON AMARTH!!!!!! YEAH, they were just great, no matter the problems of first part of the concert (problems with moshing people), no matter the pretty bad acoustic - they came, they played, they ruled! During first 5 songs the concert was interrupted by promoters and owners of the club which tried to calm down the crowd, the band was forced to leave scene twice to give people time to calm down, but when people finally calmed down (I guess the possibility of concert stopping after 5 songs made them calm down :)) show continued without any interferences and the real fun began. They played around 1.5 hour, and played all the most anticipated songs - Masters Of War, Bleed For Ancient Gods, Sound Of Eight Hooves (my favorite), Versus the World, Sorrow Through The Ninth World, Friends Of A Suncross, Victoriou March, Ride For Vengeance and more. As you probably know, their music is very energetic and live it sounds much better than on CDs - just non-stop wall of sound, crushing everything in its way. The band was very pleased with crowd's responce to the music, we received many warm words from the singer just as I expected it to be. Just for the record - every metal band which comes here says that we have the craziest crowd they've ever experienced, Ancient Rites even mentioned it somewhere in their website and Amon Amarth show wasn't different. I think it's because we don't have much concerts due to security problems in Israel, so when someone comes - it's like the event of the year.

In conclusion - it was one of the best concerts I've ever visited (I'm reffering to Amon Amarth, not the warm-ups), extremely energetic, very professionaly played. I also liked that singer chatted with the crowd between the songs, announcing songs, talking a little hebrew (mostly he drank to our health, saying "LeHaim") and saying how great we are - things that are nice to hear during the comcert.

P.S. If smeone related to the band reads it - I want to thank them for coming here and giving a great show! You are absolutley welcomed here!