It is a hard thing to evaluate an event as this. The mix of actual quality and the spectacle of miserable failure. It lived up to most of my expectations, or surpassed them. The bookings were superb, at least on saturday. Friday was black metal-night and I really didn't find a single one of the bands interesting at all. There was some hype for the band Degial, but I didn't get into it. More time to focus on the subhuman strung-out activities going on then. The only act that went beyond "fair enough" on friday was Survival Unit, which was a focused and intense display of SU at its best. The Alfarmania years had sort of washed away my memories of the SU gigs I've seen, but I think it lived up or went beyond these standards, considering the number of years of musical activity and live shows played by Kristian since then I'd say this was more professionally done than ever before. Very good indeed.
Saturday on the other hand, was all good. First we started with Khmer Noir. And ah, the joys of being the first act! It was by far our most focused set and everything went generally as planned. I'm not the one to really judge the quality of it though. It was our guestsinger for the last song who jumped of stage landing a kick in the head of some guy.
IRM was excellent as well. We had Jarl skulking in the background, handling the intense drones and general atmosphere, Martin Bladh being the centre of attention with two microphone stands, making only minor moves while delivering his superb vocals. Meanwhile Mikael Oretoft moved had quite alot of space in which to move, creating a nice stage dynamics which kept it interesting to watch as well as listening to.
Bloodline, the only black metal act of saturday. appearantly caused some controversy or other, for reasons I don't know and do not care about. They stayed away from the festival era and showed up for their set. I think their "Order of the Parasite" is a really good album, and they delivered what was described as a distorted waterfall with vocals. I think it was ment to be derogatory but I found their set starting kind of uninteresting but growing stronger as it went on (clocking in atb almost fifty minutes), the second half was all good and the last songs, where the singer shifted from gruff to a more "punk" style were extremely good to my ears.
Last of the official acts was Brighter Death Now. It was appearantly their first set since 95 on swedish soil, so I had both high and low hopes. I DID expect the event being big enough itself to draw an audence just for BDN, but that didn't happen. Anyway, Roger started by making some just retarded screams and then his assisting member started handling the music while Karmanik ran around and pulled as much of the audience as possible upfront to the stage. A smart move, as it got the enrgies flowing. Easily the most "fun" gig on the festival as there was a lot of pogoing and intense interractions between performer and audience (especially the stage being bombarded by empty beercans for a good part of the show), a general energetic and quite warm atmosphere which contrasted to the cold and stiff poses of most other acts. I'm not BDN's biggest fan, but they delivered well enough and the songs were like a small greatest hits-list. As good as my expectations and far from my worst fears. And yes I saw Roger get hit as well, I thought he hit the floor but he claimed that he just brushed it off. I don't know for sure.
The organisers, being the most wretched and fucked up people on the whole area finished with an un-announced set with their band BAEMON or Baimon or however it is spelled. I was by far too drunk and unfocused by this time and didn't really get that much impression of how it actually sounded. I thought it was quite atmospheric black metal-influenced noise (or the other way around) and half of the band used to be in swedish chaos kings STRICKTLICKERS so they were surely capable of pulling it off, but I really can't rememeber much besides the oldschool nazi skinhead cutting himself up on stage and bleeding over members of the audience...
