Performing: Amon Amarth (support acts: Insomnium, Kanonenfieber)
Date: Monday, 19 August 2024
Location: Lignano Sabbiadoro / Arena Alpe Adria / Italy
Europe, mid-August 2024! Scorched and gnawed to the bone! By blazing sun and wildfires, and savage downpours on top of that. Where’s the balance? Where did it go? Anyway. The concert pulse always slowly fades out this time of year. It’s winding down. With the grand finale of the bigger European festivals. Catching the Amon Amarth, Insomnium, and Kanonenfieber package at the nearby Italian seaside resort of Lignano Sabbiadoro (the town still falls within Friuli-Venezia Giulia) seemed like the perfect pick. We were in the grip of genuine concert withdrawal. Or more precisely — a terrible case of concert starvation.
It’s no secret that Amon Amarth have a serious army of followers worldwide and the status of a genuinely massive band — nobody can take that away from them now. And the fact is that Insomnium are a hugely respected Finnish melodic death metal outfit who can challenge anyone in their genre on stage without any gimmicks or flash — just pure musical tightness. Kanonenfieber were the relative unknown of the bunch, filing under black metal (with death metal rhetorical flourishes). The Germans cloak their music in the horrors of the First World War, making them yet another band that places ceremony and theater above musical substance — which only proves that even if someone argues metal hasn’t dangerously run dry of ideas, audiences are becoming less and less demanding when it comes to new acts. These days you can conquer the masses more easily with a well-projected spectacle of costuming than with actual musical substance, which can be completely generic. But hold on. Vikings, Prussians… War, war, war. On every track of daily life. Whichever way you turn. The little devil left hell for good a long time ago and has no intention of going back anytime soon.
But wait. August 19th is a special date! Exactly 40 years ago to the day, Iron Maiden played Ljubljana for the very first time as part of their “World Slavery” tour. Two years ago, Sweden’s Sabaton played a completely sold-out show in Opatija on that same date and then sold out every piece of merch in barely half an hour (not a single patch left). In short: energetically speaking, August 19th has a special magic to it. A magic written in the blood of metal worship!
Weather annoyances are becoming a bigger and bigger headache when it comes to attending gigs. On 19 July 2024 we had to save ourselves in Carinthia during a full-on biblical flood that caused the art rock legends Toto to cancel their show. Monday the 19th of August wasn’t offering any relief on that front either. Every time you looked up at the sky, there was this nagging feeling that it was about to bucket down and ‘wash you away’ again — deeply unsettling. Worth mentioning that a Dream Theater show here was rained off a few years back — though the same couldn’t be said for 29 July 2014 and the Simple Minds concert. That one went ahead through an actual downpour. Start to finish. Apparently a lot depends on how much the individual act’s management panics.
A few drops did fall right as we entered the Arena Alpe Adria, which has hosted a whole bunch of incredibly interesting and genre-diverse acts over the years (Rockline has caught among others: Airbourne, Spandau Ballet, Uriah Heep, Chickenfoot, Simple Minds there). But after 15 minutes the rain left us alone, and everything started unfolding nicely according to plan.
Kanonefieber from Bamberg, Germany hit the stage twenty minutes past seven. We caught this band at the Metaldays festival in Tolmin back in 2019, where the show received glowing marks — and they delivered again this time around. Stage entirely shrouded in fog. Sky overcast. First World War trenches. Barbed wire, sandbags, fortifications, bunkers… The only thing missing was the smell of gunpowder. Four guys on stage in military uniforms, faces masked. Extreme vocals barked in strict German. A Prussian helmet, goose-step, saluting — it’s all there. In a word: weirdly entertaining to watch all this in 2024, when nobody remembers the horrors and slaughter from over a hundred years ago. The band seasons its material with texts drawn from soldiers’ letters written on the First World War front lines, along with speeches by Paul von Hindenburg and Emperors Wilhelm II and Joseph I. The effect is gripping. Kanonenfieber carry an intensely dark atmosphere, almost a doomy gallows-humor grimness, as confirmed by their second new track Menschenmühle (the band opened with Grossmachtfantasie, which previews the new album “Die Urkastrophe”), while the blast beat simulations frequently land like merciless machine-gun bursts or artillery bombardments. They didn’t skip the EP — they played it in full, with Kampf und Sturm and Die Havarie, the latter’s catchy sing-along chorus getting a sizeable chunk of the floor fired up. In half an hour the band even managed to get the crowd going for a wall of death. Italian audiences generally don’t “go for German-language material” (Rammstein being the obvious exception), so it was surprising that Kanonefieber pulled it off so effortlessly. There were quite a few Slovenians in the crowd, admittedly. Solid sound. The band closed with The Yankee Division March (for which the late The Black Dahlia Murder vocalist Trevor Strnad contributed guest vocals on the recording). But compared to the Scandinavian approach in extreme metal, Kanonenfieber are simply music for ‘beggars.’ Any way you slice it. Well, for now at least. The next act proved that in no time flat.
Insomnium, on the other hand, are a band that has already built a burning fanbase. A large chunk of the crowd had been obsessively waiting for them. And this is a band that can genuinely steal a show. They hit the stage ten minutes past eight and played fifty minutes. The heavy, cloud-laden sky stayed merciful through their set too. Insomnium are a quartet who need no extra effects, no flash, no gimmicks. They’re an incredibly tight unit that does its job with hellish command and performance perfection.
This is proper melodic death metal. Head to toe. Fans of Amorphis, Wintersun, and the pioneers of the old Gothenburg school got their money’s worth. The ominous growl of bassist and vocalist Niila Sevänen, the locked-in guitar interplay of Markus Vanhala (who also occasionally took on vocal duties) and Ville Friman, and the deadly rhythmic engine of Markus Hirvonen — for many people this was the highlight of the entire evening in Lignano. The set was focused on the “1996” album, which maintains the band’s high standards. The title track, White Christ, and the superb atmospheric Lilian mid-set, flanked by the devastating older Valediction, the exceptional symphonic-epic death metal elegy Pale Morning Star, and in the finale the firing-up Unsung and crowd favorite While We Sleep. There simply wasn’t time for more. Short and sweet. Sound perfectly decent. The tracks were genuine, wide-ranging melodic death metal symphonies. Alongside the ultra-musical melancholy of the longer instrumental passages that send a chill down your spine, Sevänen’s powerfully thundering growl is simply the band’s essential core value — it has to work alongside the massively crushing guitar interplay of both six-stringers. Insomnium remain a benchmark in the extreme metal sphere, holding a special place all their own and delivering performance excellence every time they step on stage. The Finns don’t know how to phone it in, and they can’t even if they tried. Tonight was no different. With a respectably cranked-up sound to boot.
Amon Amarth were by far the most eagerly anticipated act of the evening for the majority of the crowd. The floor was packed, literally to the last corner. You could breathe on the grandstands, but on the floor only in the far reaches. Around 2,500 people (the venue holds up to 3,000). Plenty of young fans in the front rows — some who still need a chaperone. All decked out in proper Amon Amarth shirts and Viking-themed accessories. But the gold medal went to a guy dressed head to toe in wolf fur — wolf ears, snout, tail, the full kit, nothing comes close. We later found out he’d arrived in a classic Audi with license plates from Čakovec. An absolute ‘king’ — a proper ‘Croatian wolf.’
On the right side of the stage, the organizers had beefed up security considerably. The number of security staff had been at least tripled. You know why. Because the hour of reckoning is nigh — Tolkien’s Mount Doom, in other words. Half past nine. The stage opens up. On it, two colossal — several meters tall — Vikings standing guard. With gleaming eyes. One on each side of the stage. The drum fortress perched on a large platform supported by a gigantic Viking war helmet with horns. Lavish and hypnotic. Then the lads come charging onto the stage. All dressed in identical gear. Black shirts with a ‘split’ letter ‘A’ in red at the center (making it doubled — in line with the band’s name). And the imposing frontman Johann Hegg, who over the years — with a growing grey beard and an earned belly — has transformed into a proper Father Christmas figure! With his obligatory drinking horn at his belt. Everything is in its rightful place.
The band opened with a thunderous Raven’s Flight (“Berserker”, 2019) and the crowd lost it immediately. This time around the band didn’t use real fire in the pyro — just smoke salvos. But the classic Guardians of Asgaard (“Twilight of the Thunder God”, 2008) was the moment when people truly lost their minds. Watching the quintet at work, the whole thing looked very routine, honestly — the band has played together so much, and four of the five members have essentially been together since the second album “The Avenger” (1999). Those security guys on the right side of the stage weren’t there for nothing, though. They quickly moved into the space between the stage and the front row as the crowd started crowd-surfing, though it didn’t reach the scale you’d see at festivals in Tolmin.
As is his custom, after the second track Hegg took a longer break to work the crowd and fire them up, delivering ‘a few sweet words’ as expected. And then bang. Say what you want about Amon Amarth, but one thing is incredible: the bond between the band and the crowd. Magical. Total command of everything that Viking nomenclature and Norse mythology demands in its messaging, and of course everyone was eating out of Johann Hegg and company’s hand. Excellent tightness, superior sound. Given the remarkable ceremony of it all — with a constantly changing stage backdrop (from the already-mentioned colossal Viking statues to longships, and in the finale during the first encore Crack the Sky a gigantic dragon) — smoke salvos, dynamic lighting, with extras waving flags during Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags or dressed as ‘spearmen’ for The Pursuit of Vikings — the effect is nothing short of hypnotic. Add the insane crowd reactions — at times the audience became a single organism, like a sixth band member — and the feeling is extraordinary. You feel that grandeur of a great unity, which is always most intense at heavy metal concerts. These feelings are unique, and to experience them you have to go to a heavy metal show. And Amon Amarth can boast an exceptional garrison of devoted followers.
Hegg didn’t hold back on the crowd pumping: “Brothers! Sisters! Vikings!” People were eating out of his hand. Then later: “Legions!” And so on. Everyone was also waiting for the moment he’d raise his horn. That came after the excellent newer Shield Wall (“Berserker”, 2019). “Raise Your Horns!” Hegg roared, lifted his horn high and toasted the crowd. The enthusiasm never let up. And absolutely everyone drained their beer cups on the spot. The big finale with Raise Your Horns (“Jomsviking”, 2016), written precisely for this purpose. If they’d played it three times in a row, the venue would have definitely run out of beer.
And what about the rain? Lightning had been flashing the whole time. An extra effect added to the whole ceremony — free of charge. You’d look up at the sky while the stage thundered louder than the actual thunder above, where lightning was flashing. Flashing from the stage, flashing from the sky. Flashing from everywhere. And then it finally started to rain. During the first encore. With a name that could have been custom ordered: Crack the Sky. As if Valhalla had finally heard the call and sent a few drops down onto the Arena Alpe Adria. And the funny thing: it only rained during that one track. A second free special effect. As if Amon Amarth had been in charge of absolutely everything that evening. The second encore — the big bomb, the long-awaited Twilight of the Thunder God — was completely dry! But the atmosphere was grandiose! Huge numbers of people from Slovenia in the crowd. Seriously.
The whole event felt like a fond callback to past encounters with this band in Tolmin. Amon Amarth are certainly a band capable of drawing 10,000+ at a time — depending on the festival capacity, depending on where that festival happens to be. But the Arena Alpe Adria is an absolutely ideal setting for a triple package like this, crowned by the Amon Amarth headliner. It’s remarkable how much this band has grown. There was a time they played Cvetličarna in Ljubljana. Back in 2006 and 2007. There was a time they played Boogaloo in Zagreb. That was 2009. Playing in front of 2,500 people tonight — given the scale of their name — is actually a rather modest and intimate fact. Still a smaller venue that, precisely because of its capacity, delivered a richer intensification of the atmosphere and feeling; even those in the absolute minority who came more out of curiosity (like the two of us) could still breathe normally and survive the whole ordeal without any battle scars. In short, to wrap it up: an hour and a half with Amon Amarth! Exceptional and fascinating!
Author: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
Kanonenfieber – setlist:
1. Grossmachtfantasie
2. Menschenmühle
3. Dicke Bertha
4. Ubootsperre (Intro)
5. Kampf und Sturm
6. Die Havarie
7. Over There (orig. George M. Cohan – intro)
8. The Yankee Division March
Insomnium – setlist:
1. 1696
2. Valediction
3. White Christ
4. Pale Morning Star
5. Lilian
6. Unsung
7. While We Sleep
8. Karelia (taped outro)
Amon Amarth – setlist:
1. Raven’s Flight
2. Guardians of Asgaard
3. The Pursuit of Vikings
4. Deceiver of the Gods
5. As Loke Falls
6. Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags
7. Heidrun
8. War of the Gods
9. Put Your Back Into the Oar
10. The Way of Vikings
11. Under the Northern Star
12. First Kill
13. Shield Wall
14. Raise Your Horns
—encore—
15. Crack the Sky
16. Twilight of the Thunder God
