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Witnessed

Nile, Grave, Belphegor... no wait, Severe Torture, 2008-10-04

29/10/08 || theProphet

Venue: Kulturbolaget
Where: Malmö
When: October 4th, 2008.
How: Hungover and slightly ill.
Why: Cause I had already paid for the fucking ticket.
Country: Sweden.

Intro: Right, so I was set out to see Nile, Grave and Belphegor at KB in Malmö on October 4th, a Saturday. Really, fuck shows on Saturdays, after Friday nights heavy boozing I was incredibly hungover and had a slight fever. Alas, I really didn’t feel like going to the fucking show at all, add to this that my friend (who had been clever enough to wait with buying the ticket) backed out after hearing that Belphegor wasn’t actually going to play the show. Stupid prick. I even tried to sell my ticket for like a fifth of the initial price, but didn’t succeed. Thus, off I went into the Saturday night.

When I got to the venue, some people told me that the bass player of Nile had been asking around if anyone in the queue had any weed, to which some tipsy fan jokingly replied that “weed is for fags”. The Nile bassist went fucking apeshit and told the bouncers to not let the poor fucker in to see his favourite band. Depending on how rampant your homophobia runs, I think we can all agree on that wanting to effectively fine a fan of your band about 40 bucks for calling you a fudge packer is seriously fucked up and a proof of being pretty fucking out of touch with ones’ stature as a Nile session bassist.

The future of the evening looked bright…

Severe Torture: Replacing Belphegor for the evening (and some other evenings, on other shows, in other towns) was Dutch “brutal death metallers” Severe Torture. I arrived just in time to take a place in the back, arms folded and occasionally nodding my head approvingly. Severe Torture did a good job though, the vocals sucked a bit due to not being very articulate, personally I think it’s cooler if the vocals go like “Revolting thoughts of an unclean mind!!!” as opposed to “KGHaslösdgdöadfjdoöyeropaweryaewowidhask!!!!”, maybe that’s just me. Anyways, a passing grade for Severe Torture it is. 6/10

Grave: This might be blasphemy or whatever, but I’m really not that into Grave. It’s not that I don’t like them, I just haven’t heard that much of them, I was thinking about checking them up seriously, before the show, but then my fucking computer died on me so that didn’t happen. Fuck it, I’ve got all the death metal bands I need. In any case, Grave sported a slightly worse guitar sound but a way better vocalist than Severe Torture. Adding to this, they had a couple of guest vocalists onstage, this being, as mentioned over and over and over again during the show, the finale of the tour. I didn’t recognize anybody, but there was this big guy, who did vocals on “Soulless”, who did a great fucking job. Needless to say, Grave raised the bar, just before the main event. In a week or so, they are opening for Vader, also at KB, Malmö, and this time I reckon I’ll be able to appreciate them more. I’m looking forward to it as a eleven-year-old looks forward to growing pubes. 7/10

Nile: And so the stage was cleared for the ancient monster that is Nile (come to think of it, they surely aren’t as ancient as Grave, are they?). To the swirling guitar masturbation of “Dusk Falls upon the Temple of the Serpent on the Mount of Sunrise”, the quartet from South Carolina entered the stage. One thing I immediately noticed was Karl Sanders’ dazzling fucking smile. Seriously, I can’t think of anyone playing death metal who looks as genuinely non-threatening as him. He’s the fucking Santa Claus of technical death, I’m even pretty certain that I heard him bellow out a hearty “HO-HO-HO” at some point during the show. However, it turned out that this was in fact the bassist who was trying to prove his questioned masculinity by showing his appreciation of the (as usual, pretty few) ladies who had turned up to watch his pompous ass onstage.

Onto the actual performance then, I’ll just to have to get this out of the way: HOLY FUCKING SHIT IS NILE FAST!!! Fucking Lucifer, seriously, listening to this on record really can’t be compared to see those fucking fingers move over the fretboard faster than a napalm covered cheetah. Yes, indeed, very fast. The downside was however, that to enable the moronically fast playing, the band members appeared as almost frozen onstage, statues locked in a cosmic struggle with their own instruments. It should be pointed out to some readers that while I just said that they where as frozen onstage, this does NOT mean that their fingers stopped moving as well. The fingers where still fast as fuck, alright? In short, there was not much headbanging and shenanigans going on up there on stage. Adding to this, Nile were proud to present the most clickety drum sound I’ve ever heard in a live situation (and I’ve seen Slagsmålsklubben live), this is just fucking lame, I mean, why do this? Is there really anybody out there who thinks that this sounds cool? Or doesn’t notice?

So, Nile are boring onstage and their drums sound ridiculous, this must be a pretty average show, yes? NO! And the reason for this is simple: Nile has over the years written some of the absolutely finest death metal numbers ever. The setlist was, I think, slightly dominated by “Annihilation of the Wicked”, which is all fine and dandy with me since that’s my favourite album by the make-believe Egyptians. When the title track of that album starts rumbling through the speakers, you’d have to be lobotomized not to wanna groove, sword in hand, your way through a throng of desert warriors, leaving their corpses pulverized in your trail. A fucking beast of a song. The same goes for almost every other song they played during the evening, however, when they had finished playing the monumental “Unas, Slayer of the Gods” and everyone was cheering for an encore, I was surprised to not see the band walk back out and rip through “Lashed to the Slave Stick”. This was in fact the only song I missed, together with “Von Unaussprechligen Kulten” (I don’t even have to look up the spelling on that one anymore), but the latter I had not expected them to play in the first place.

A special mention must also go out to front-man Dallas Toller-Wade for his amazing talk in between songs and his assurance that everyone was “TRUE FUCKING METAL, I CAN TELL!!!” which made me feel really accepted and ready to join the sub-culture based camaraderie with all the other idiots in the crowd. All in all, I was glad I dragged my ass to the show, though I’m sure that I could have enjoyed it more. 7.5/10

Witnessed