Disse to gigantene innen amerikansk thrash var på Oslobesøk for tre dager siden, og med tanke på at jeg har fulgt disse siden starten, skjønner dere kanskje hvorfor jeg fikk utslett utover kvelden, lokalisert 33 mil unna. Men, jeg var så heldig å få låne en konsertanmeldelse og bilder fra bloggen Katarsis, og kan derfor presentere en omtale av begge banda her på Heavymetal.no. 

Teksten er forfattet av Mari Thune, bildene er knipset av Priscila Janfalk, tusen takk til dere begge! Sjekk ut Katarsis HER
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Anmeldelsen ligger ute på engelsk, det får den lov til å gjøre her også, det får da være måte på hvor mye tid jeg skal bruke på Heavymetal.no ;) 

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When this gig was announced, I was totally mindblown. Not only because of the line-up with the two thrash classics, it was more the venue they were going to play. Revolver? The tiny basement in Oslo that only takes 150 people or something? Hell yeah. And this is how it went.

Flotsam and Jetsam@Facebook

The concert was of course completely sold out, and by the time Flotsam and Jetsam hit the stage, a lot of people had found their way to the venue. Clearly, the lucky ones wouldn’t miss out on this.

The thing about Revolver is that it is indeed very intimately, and that’s a cool thing because you get to see bands up front on a small stage. The problem is that the stage is so low that you see next to nothing standing in the middle of the crowd. Unless you’re a big fellow and/or front row. Visually, Revolver is a crappy scene, and a sold out concert doesn’t make it any better. Well, enough with the negativity, what was the concert like you might ask?

Flotsam and Jetsam had the best sound I’ve ever heard at this place. Nothing to complain about, it was perfect for this kind of music. They startet out with some oldies, with Desecrator from the legendary Doomsday For The Deciever album being the second song, and She Took An Axe as the third. Both very welcomed by the audience, singing along already.

At this time, the place was filled up and way too warm. And it didn’t particularly cool down when the band continued to pump out heavy riffs in an impetuous pace. Hammerhead followed up in the middle of the set, and was a definite highlight for me, and the rest of the audience seemed to agree. Killer song, and well played! Eric A.K. did a fabulous job with the vocals also. Not only on Hammerhead, the vocals sounded great the entire concert.

I’m not familiar with the whole Flotsam and Jetsam discography, but as far as I can tell, they played a couple of tracks from some of the newer albums alongside the material from the 80s, Swatting at Flies being one of them. Well, newer is maybe exaggerating a bit, it’s been over twenty years since the album Cuatro hit the stores.

To end this intense performance, Flotsam and Jetsam picked an old demo song that later appeared on the bands second album, No Place For Disgrace. They introduced the song by telling it’s about gladiators, knights and shit, and it’s called I Live You Die (shouldn’t there be a comma in the title?). This is the first time I’ve witnessed someone actually crowdsurf at Revolver, haha.

Death Angel@Facebook

It’s not an easy job to follow up what Flotsam and Jetsam did this evening, but Death Angel is well suited to do so. To my surprise, there are less people in the audience during Death Angel than Flotsam and Jetsam, but the ones left certainly had a great time.

This was my third time seeing Death Angel, and it’s beyond unbelievable that they’re playing on this tiny stage. Last time, they played in front of a way larger audience at Sweden Rock Festival, and this is a totally different experience.

Although I consider The Ultra-Violence as their absolutely best album, I enjoyed the entire concert with material covering Death Angel’s whole career. The band was really tight, fast and energetic as a thrash metal act should be. Evil Priest is the first one from the debutalbum, and this one really got the audience going. As with Flotsam and Jetsam, I didn’t actually see much, there’s a lot of big fellows in the crowd that makes it impossible to see what’s going on upon stage, fortunately vocalist Mark Osegueda solves the problem by standing on the monitor now and then. Way to go, Mark!

Death Angel presented a long show, I think they played around 16 numbers lasting one and a half hour. One and a half hour with thrashing madness, that’s impressive. The audience were shouting the band name in between the songs, and were applauding the new stuff as well the old. The title track of the latest album, The Dream Calls for Blood, was greatly appreciated, but for me, some of the newer material is not that interesting.

The three songs to end the whole thing, were Bored from Frolic Through the Park and finally, Kill as One from the debut album. Ah, what an awesome piece of music this is! Definitely the highlight of the performance. People called for Mistress of Pain all the way throughout the concert, but unfortunately it wasn’t a part of the set. The final act was the intro of The Ultra-Violence title track, and ended with Thrown to the Wolves from The Act of Dying. This made the front rowers moshpit, even though there wasn’t much space left to do so.