Amon Amarth, Karma Violens // Fuzz Live Music Club, Athens, Greece // 09.05.2014

Friday afternoon, and we’re lead to Fuzz Club to witness one of the few bands who have such an original Viking look and most important: attitude. This band is Amon Amarth. Alongside with bands like Children Of Bodom, Lamb Of God, Slipknot, Machine Head etc they have brought an incredible amount of young fans to the metal genre and even opened the door to a lot of them for extreme metal. With a new really good record to tour with called “Deceiver Of The Gods“, they were about to hit the Greek audiences with two shows in Athens and Thessaloniki.

Karma Violens was the first ones to hit the stage. Because of the style of music they cause a big moshpit in the middle as they played material from their “Dormancy” record and their upcoming record sometime in 2014. One of their highlights was the great cover of Slayer‘s “Raining Blood” which simply made the whole pit go insane, it’s fuckin Slayer after all! The band seemed in a great mood and kicked our asses all over the place, without forgetting to thank us for supporting them with our presence.

Up next the Vikings hailing from Sweden. These guys are simply phenomenal when they play live, whether they have the trademark drakkar scene setting or not. In they came with two new songs from “Deceiver Of The Gods“: “Father Of The Wolf” and the title track and the crowd below went fuckin nuts! The only bad thing about the crowd was that all the way pushing, not moshing which resulted to a lot of people falling down. Guys, just open the pit somewhere, and fortunately they did on the second song. We heard stuff that night from “Versus The World” (“Death In Fire”), “Fate Of Norns” (“The Pursuit Of Vikings” one of the biggest crowd pleasers as the closing track, went on singing it right before the final chorus, it was beautiful!), “With Oden On Our Side” (“Runes To My Memory”, “Cry Of The Blackbirds”), “Twilight Of The Thunder God” (the classic title track as part of the encore, “Guardians Of Asgaard”, “Live For The Kill”, “Varyags Of Miklagaard”) “Surtur Rising” (“War Of The Gods”, “The Last Stand Of Freij”, “Destroyer Of The Universe”) and the new one “Deceiver Of The Gods” (“Coming Of The Tide”, “As Loke Falls”, “Shape Shifter”, “Warriors From The North”). The crowd was just going crazy with every song, simply mindblowing in a jam-packed Fuzz Club. Also speaking of Fuzz Club, since the Misfits show some months ago I have to say I’m glad they changed the floor structure in this venue, it’s easier for people to mosh that way, well done people. The air condition was working really well so no one had breathing problems as far as everyone else in concerned. After and hour and 40 minutes later the lights went on and everybody were just trying to realize what they just witnessed, a well oiled melodic Death metal machine devastating everything in its path, like their Norse ancestors did when they raped and pillaged villages some ages ago. Whoever doubted their sheer force, could just witness that show and understand! Hail the Norsemen and wish them well! Until next time support every local band you see any means necessary! They deserve it 100%. Cheers!

Report: John Savvidis
Photos: Dimitris Balabakis

AMON AMARTH SETLIST

Father of the Wolf
Deceiver of the Gods
Death in Fire
Live for the Kill
As Loke Falls
Coming of the Tide
Guardians of Asgaard
Shapeshifter
Warriors of the North
Runes to my Memory
Varyags of Miklagaard
Last Stand of Frej
Destroyer of the Universe
Cry of the Black Birds
War of the Gods
Twilight of the Thunder God
The Pursuit of Vikings