Written by:	Baz Anderson
Published:	February 07, 2010
Event:	Marduk: Funeral Nation Tour 2010 (Website)
Location:	Retribution, Leicester, United Kingdom
Galleries:	Marduk, Anaal Nathrakh - Leicester, England, 6th February 2010 by Baz Anderson (32)

Black metal. Leicester, an unusual tour destination, and a venue clearly inexperienced at handling shows of this size. The lack of organisation at this venue was clear from the get-go as the doors opened one hour late due to the venue's normal sound guy messing up the whole sound system and then running away for someone else to sort out. Eventually, however, we made our way inside to a nicely sized room with small but comfortable, intimate if you will, stage setting.

Zebediah Crowe

The first black metal band of the evening walked onto the stage, performed and left. Standing uneasy in corpsepaint the three-piece gave us their interpretation of black metal, which unfortunately fell quite short of good. The growing audience gave a small, polite applause, but unfortunately Zebediah Crowe need a lot more time to familiarise themselves with their instruments. Drums especially were all over the place, but as a whole the band showed no conviction to own the stage. Back to the drawing board.



Artisian

The second black metal band of the evening, Artisian, had an extremely imposing frontman. He spoke with intention and brought with him two other corpsepainted chaps to raise some hell. The rise in quality compared to opening band was almost immeasurable as this three-piece delivered their black metal in a controlled and impressive manner. Tension was still among the audience, and the frontman's deathly stare at the security guy, after he had unreasonably forced the audience to move back from the stage, made the set a little uncomfortable, but musically enjoyable. A long way from the finished article, but Artisian showed a good promise with a fair amount of blasting and double kick drumming to see us through.



Anaal Nathrakh

Third up, Anaal Nathrakh make no attempt with corpsepaint or any other fads or gimmicks. This was straight up grinding black metal with no compromise whatsoever. Clearly a large chunk of the audience had come for this abomination of a band as this set saw the most movement and excitement among the people. Dave Hunt gave us his amusing autobiographical anecdotes between songs of his time living in Leicester, and came across as a smart guy in contrast with his roles with Benediction and Mistress. Quite simply, this is the most extreme band you will ever see. This is fast as hell extreme metal with a madman making inhuman sounds over the top, with the occasional clean vocal chorus. The screams were a thing to behold, the clean vocals not so much, but who cares anyway. The drums were a completely different thing. Out of this world drumming, a constant stream of ultra-sonic blastbeats blaring through the speakers. The energy created here was unrivalled the whole night as the band took us through each of their albums closing with the other worldly experience of "Pandemonic Hyperblast". Blown away is an understatement, this is as extreme as metal comes.



Marduk

Finally, headliners Marduk completed the black metal quartet. A long wait between previous band and the Swedes taking the stage dampened the energy, but these corpses weren't about to leave without delivering a show. Marduk are as black metal as they come, and their delivery was intense and punishing. It soon became apparent that this is a band that sound much, much better playing live than on their recordings. Seemingly faster, the drums especially were blasting wildly at crazy speeds and took the whole band onto the next level. The blasting, fast songs made up the best part of the set time-wise, and for enjoyable purposes. The band do have their slower songs though, and were not afraid to pull a couple out to slow down the pace for a while. The set visited the band's latest two albums frequently, but we also had a visit back to the early "Still Fucking Dead". The band pulled off this extreme set almost perfectly and also gave the audience a bit of a surprise at the end with the accompaniment of Primordial's Nemtheanga for a closing song of "Accuser/Opposer". The band seemingly were supposed to come back for an encore, but possibly due to time restraints did not. This closed the show with a slightly confused note, but putting this aside Marduk delivered an extremely impressive and enjoyable set.



A night of extreme pleasures. Anaal Nathrakh might have taken the night, but the quality of both these and the Swedish headliners created a night to remember for a long time.

Written by Barry Anderson.
Photos by Barry Anderson.