Event:	Marduk + Chthonic
Written by:	Götter
Published:	02.12.2007

It took years of anxious waiting and two cancelled shows for Marduk to finally play in Estonia. Rumours began abounding again this Autumn and they were followed by a confirmation that the unbelievable is really going to come true. And although many were skeptical until the end, the Panzer Division indeed showed up.

Black metal is popular in Estonia and it is no wonder that the concert hall which has hosted many big names in extreme metal was quite crowded. Indeed, one found it hard to move around or stand without getting in someone's way. I suppose it means something, but I nonetheless prefer small shows with a limited number of people. Not possible with Marduk though.

The first performer was Hellbox, replacing Sarkom at the last minute. And skipping ahead a bit, this probably saved the show for me. Anyway, Hellbox played their style of old school black/thrash metal and it is not surprising that they started out as a Venom cover band. My main regret is that I didn't catch the entire set, but what I heard was excellent. They rocked out in a most delightful way and were totally tongue-in-cheek (no band of this style could take itself seriously in the 21st century). Yes, the vocalist wore leather shorts. And yes, they were ridiculous in a way only Finns know how to be. The cover of Venom's "Black Metal" ended the set which would be one of the best performances I've heard in a long while.



















Chthonic from Taiwan was second and I deliberately skipped them for the most part. I mean, I have a CD of theirs and it's pretty bad, so can you imagine watching a Cradle Of Filth / Dimmu Borgir clone (of sorts) on stage? On those unlucky moments when I did enter the concert room I got exactly what I expected - pussy black metal at its usual. The vocalist's high pitched screams still leave me confused as to what his/her actual gender is, but since I don't want to offend hermaphrodites, let me just say that the vocals were a long monotonous whining without any ups, downs or tone changes. The music was also powerless and flaccid, without any saving grace whatsoever. Perhaps the only cool thing about Chthonic was the fact that their bass player is a girl, something which I noticed only when someone pointed it out. Who could tell under all this paint?



















And then Marduk. I wonder if things would've been different with Legion still aboard, but the way they were now just proved that one should never be too anxious to hear a band. Luckily, I hadn't listened to any Marduk save their newest album for years, so I didn't look forward to the show that much. Thus they only had a chance to be mildly, not offensively disappointing. No, their set list was praiseworthy, containing songs from every period, but after hearing "Baptism by Fire," which I wanted most and which came second, I had heard it all. The show was a non-stop rage of brutal black metal from start to finish, being inevitably quite dull. My interest in the set gradually washed away along with Mortuus' corpse paint. Eventually I just waited for the end and soon enough it came not.



















Verdict: without Hellbox, this show would've been a massive failure. Chthonic has no business existing outside the Digimon franchise. Marduk should stick to releasing albums instead of giving shows, as their latest "Rom 5:12" was really good, except not live.







Super special completely irrelevant free bonus review

The next evening there was a show featuring four Estonian bands, namely Aeon Aethereal, Burn Still, These Broken Remains and Nitrous. I was there for the latter - the thrashing of Hellbox from last night had left a good taste in my mouth and I wanted more of it.

Okay, so I was there quite early and spent my time drinking dark Kru?ovice which is my favorite beer. One doesn't enjoy it from the first glass on, but after the second or the third the excellent taste really comes out - before that it usually tastes and smells like bread gone sour or something, and the foam on top is really bad. Also, I hate being served beer from plastic ware, but I had to do with what I was given. And as tradition holds in that particular concert place, the prices were murderous. To add to my misery, the smoking room was more like a test chamber for carbon dioxide experiments, as all the ventilation system seemingly did was pull out fresh air.

So there I was sipping my second beer and waiting for Aeon Aethereal to start. This was the only other band besides Nitrous that I had any expectations for. I figured they were some sort of melodic death metal and that's exactly what they were. Usually I have a violent dislike for melodeath, but that evening this was not the case, since the band was too boring to induce any violence. All the time one got the feeling that exactly that has been done a million times before. This is probably true, looking at the band members' shirts of choice (Behemoth, At The Gates, etc.).

The second band Burn Still (I think it was Burn Still, but it could've been the other one, how the hell do I tell the difference?) and they played metalcore mixed with some death metal. Now metalcore is usually the material for bad trips and Burn Still were really good at doing what their kind do best - sucking. However, I've got to give it to them, their music at least sounded alive unlike Aeon Aethereal's, and the singer had a good vocal range, capable of anything from death growls to those annoying high screams. Coming to the vocalist, for one song some other guy came on stage and they sung duo. The band had promised a "surprise" one song before and they sure acted it out like they were Iron Maiden calling Paul DiAnno on stage or something. But instead of DiAnno we had another guy uttering weird screeching sounds only vaguely different from the main singer's. Oh, and a word of advice: metal bands, unless they play symphonic metal or similar, are not supposed to have two non-musician vocalists on stage. One has to pull it off or get going. These two guys looked and acted like rappers. Rap is shit.

By that time, I was more fed up than humanly possible, low on funds also, thus I finished my third beer and boarded the last bus to take me home. What a waste of time and money that evening was.