It all began with a fairly dull and slightly prolonged press conference, at which both the band members and the assembled press corps looked rather sluggish. There were a couple of more-or-less interesting questions, but everyone was probably floored by some young woman's request to recount the band's history. Because the press conference had dragged on ("only" an hour and a half), the band GLOOM OF DOOM had to be removed from the performance schedule. And so the concert was opened by the Kharkiv band NOKTURNAL MORTUM with the song "Ukraina" from their new album, which this time sounded simply brilliant — definitively the finest song of the entire evening. The sound was very decent compared, for example, to the Kolovorot festival. Then they went through old familiar battle-anthems: "Chorny Voron", "V Ogne Derevyannykh Veshchey", "Slava Geroyam"; "Kolyada" was a particular delight. The NOKTURNAL MORTUM performance also evidently had to be cut slightly short, despite the fans' desire to hear more.
After NOKTURNAL MORTUM departed, Swedish technicians bustled around the stage while the crowd drifted to the foyer, where the foresighted management had organised the sale of beer, juice, and water. Then the lights went out, the fog machine kicked in, and the silhouettes of the celebrated Swedes took shape on stage — and from a standing start they launched straight into "Scrutinised" from the latest album Virus, released the previous year on Nuclear Blast. A vivid track, it must be said! Something like a bomb exploded in the hall — people by some means filled the fan zone almost completely. The Swedes demonstrated that they know how to set things alight.
The audience deserves a separate mention. The crowd was absolutely mixed: skinheads, various punks, gloomy and horrifyingly grave-faced goths festooned with assorted paraphernalia. Even some rather respectable older gentlemen were observed. Toward the end the audience called them back for encores twice, which evidently delighted Peter greatly: "We came to you for the first time, but far from the last." The concert was unquestionably brilliant — we await their return.
Setlist:
Scrutinised Let The Knife Do The Talking A Thousand Lies War-Path Inferior Devoties Roswell 47 Turn The Page The FOURTH DIMENSION Impotent God Eraser Adjusting The Sun Carved Up Until The End Fractured Millennium Fire In The Sky The Final Chapter