No, not *that* kind of black metal, silly! Although actually the holiday was rather helpful; due to the light traffic, it meant that my hour-long drive down to Mokena through light snow wasn’t a complete nightmare like it could have been.

I strategically arrived just before Enslaved began, missing Abigail Williams, as well as two local openers, Liche and Withering Soul (who I can see this weekend at Heathen Crusade).

The last (and only) time I’d seen Enslaved was when they played the Milwaukee Metalfest several years back and played about four songs. So it was nice to see a mostly-full set from them, although it was heavily skewed towards new stuff. Beyond one song from ‘Monumension’ and one from ‘Frost’ (which Grutle oddly referred to as their first album), everything else was from ‘Ruun’ and ‘Isa’. They had a projector going the whole time with (kinda amateur) trippy visuals, which contrasted heavily with their quite “metal” appearance, but perfectly matched the psychadelic/metal mix within their music. Some creative promoter really needs to get these guys and Isis on a tour together. It was funny to see that on their ‘Isis’ song (‘Ruun’), the keyboardist/backup-clean-singer strapped on a 3rd guitar, just like Isis.

I’d never even heard any Dark Funeral before I checked out a few songs when I heard about this tour. They sounded a fair bit less shitty than I expected, and since I paid $30 to get in, I figured I’d stick around to see at least some of their set. Their full-on Black Metal getup strongly reinforced the “Enslaved needs to tour with a band like Isis” idea. The guys in the band were all wearing leather armor and full makeup, which made them look just like Peter Jackson’s orcs. The singer was Lurtz, Saruman’s Uruk-hai captain, while the long-faced guitarists were Mordor orcs. Haha, I realize just now that black metal personalities like Shagrath and Count Grishnakh originally took their names from Tolkien’s orcs, so I guess the whole thing has come full-circle!

Musically they weren’t too bad. They easily had the best sound I’ve ever heard out of a traditional black metal band; everything was very treble-y and cold and grim just like I’m sure their albums sound, but also clear and not buzzy. Given their look, it was quite shocking when the singer spoke between songs in a normal (and quite smooth) voice, especially considering how raw his ‘singing’ voice is. At one point he said something like “I’ve been ripping my throat for 20 years, and the reason I keep doing it is for you guys!” I thought I detected an undercurrent in their that said “I’m getting too fucking old for this clown shit and really wish I didn’t have to do it anymore, but I gotta make a living!” Anyway, despite their surprising goodness, I was coming down with a cold so I checked out after 6 or 7 songs.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 6:40 pm and is filed under concert. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.