Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth released their latest album ‘Deceiver of the Gods’ about eighteen months ago, so it’s fair to say the tour has taken a while to reach Norwich. Adding two strong support bands to the bill made this an eagerly awaited show.
First up was Savage Messiah, a band that I know little about, but judging by the t-shirts in the crowd, had a bit of a following here. After their first two songs, I can honestly say that I was not overly impressed, but the third song ‘Hellblazer’ really upped the pace and marked a real change in the crowd as well. Vocalist Dave Silver was keen to point out that though they are primarily known as a thrash metal band they are more than that and followed this statement up with ‘Scavengers of Mercy’ not at all thrashy and probably the highlight of their set, a strong finish with ‘The Fateful Dark’ and ‘Minority of One’ brought their set to a close, six songs all off the latest album kept the fans happy and certainly seemed to gain them a fair few new ones, I’ll certainly be checking out the album.
Huntress are a band I like and had intended to see at the last two Download festivals, but somehow I contrived to miss them both times. Here they performed a quite varied set with a couple of songs off each of their studio albums and a couple of new unreleased songs from a new album to be released later this year. Vocalist Jill Janus can certainly sing and has quite a vocal range, her operatic background helping, particularly with her frequent screams. Her theatrical style, with some pretty scary facial expressions, isn’t everyone’s thing, and there were a few laughs within the crowd, but for the most part, the audience loved it. The new songs sounded good, and this bodes well for the album later in the year, which hopefully will see Huntress return to Norwich sooner rather than later.
With nine studio albums behind them, Amon Amarth have plenty of songs to choose from, but kicked off with two from the latest album, ‘Father of the Wolf’ and the title track ‘Deceiver of the Gods’. Right from the first song vocalist Johan Hegg had the crowd in his pocket growling and grinning (he was clearly having as much fun as the crowd) his way through an awesome seventeen song set list that included eight songs that made the greatest hits album, four from the new one and with a rarity or two thrown in for good measure the crowd were well happy.
If there is one criticism of Amon Amarth it is that their songs tend to be one pace and sound similar, which may be a problem listening to album after album, but in a live show is not an issue. The truth is Amon Amarth stick to what they do well, and when it sounds this good, why not?
Closing song ‘Victorious March’ is an amazing song on its own, but following it up with encores ‘Twilight of the Thunder God’ and ‘Pursuit of Vikings’ made for a final twenty minutes that can only be described as “epic” and had the crowd absolutely rocking.
I can honestly say that I haven’t seen this kind of crowd reaction in the Waterfront for a very long time. I have wanted to see Amon Amarth live for a long time, and now that I have, I just want to see them again!
Words – Neal Francis
Photography – Kayleigh Warren
