I honestly don’t know how and where to begin with the report but the first thing that comes to my mind is that I saw Abbath and I still can’t believe it. Fifteen year old me would kill for an opportunity like this so thanks to MM Concerts and Serbian Hellbangers, after Romania, Belgrade had a pleasure to welcome one of the biggest stars of black metal scene. Former Immortal lead singer Abbath surprised us, some in a good way, some in a less good way.  Everything would be great if I stop with this sentence but no… Let’s see what Abbath actually brought us on his summer night.

Concert started right on time and every time when this organisation  welcomed someone it’s the same story so the audience knew what to expect and we all came on time. Abbath had no support band, there was something called DJ and I honestly didn’t notice the difference between regular music that goes before any other concert and this one. First disappointment was that I didn’t see any scenography. Everything  I followed about  his show, previous months, everything the audience in Belgrade waited for, big axes, fire, Abbath’s flag that falls in the beginning… None of it was brought up to stage. Not even the logo of a band… Only at the end of the concert I noticed  a pale picture of ravens behind drummers’ backs and that’s it, with a blue stage light no one saw that. His mask with horns he had for a few songs was obviously enough for this audience. I mean, I understand who cares about Belgrade, half full Americana hall, festivals are more important, right?

I don’t know if sound was good or not, I heard drumms way too much and didn’t understand vocal at all but in the back situation was different so next time my place on his concerts will be in the back, there was no much to see except misters Ole Andre (guitar) and Andreas Fosse Salbu (bass guitar) who left their heart on stage, specially bass player that totally took my attention with his stage appearance and energy. Audience was my biggest surprise of all. I expected more young people to show up, more corpse paint, masks and more hype before the  concert itself. I think three big metal concerts happened in the last two weeks. People were out of sources so that’s maybe a main reason I didn’t see many people as expected. I grew up with black metal fans mostly in some hang outs when I was a teenager. Immortal was way too present on CDs I found and listened to with admiration, so is it about different idols new metalheads have or expensive tickets? I don’t know but the audience was quite older than I expected. Immortal fans, some people in white shirts who came after work made me one of the youngest in the concert hall.  Set list was cold as northern winter, interesting old but gold Immortal hits such as “Damned in Black”, “At the Heart of Winter”, “Blashyrkh” many more and my favorite from the best of the same name, “Sons of the Northern Darkness”. They went behind one back on stage  without greeting but it didn’t stop the audience from clapping and shouting really loud and joyfully. Not to be understood wrong, this was one good concert, we had a pleasure to see and hear one of the biggest black metal stars ever, in my head at least, but the show could be done with more soul. Till next time Abbath…

Photo credit: Ivan Veselinović