Well, last night’s visit to the
Unfortunately, this also means I missed one of the bands I wanted to see, Dark Tranquility. I came in right at the beginning of Devil Driver’s set. I am unfamiliar with their music, but they managed to earn the highest accolade available to an American band: listenable as an opening act. Bury Your Dead was not so fortunate; being more of a hardcore than a metal band, they lacked somewhat in fans or good music. Credit to them for the most energetic performance of the night, but they were still a total downer once I realized that all members of a band I was watching were obviously younger than me.
Poland’s Behemoth (pic) were pretty good… I had recently deleted all their music after a failed attempt to get into them (good music, poor vocals) but they sounded pretty good live. At this point I had wended my way toward the front of the pit, and by the lull between their and Dimmu Borgir’s set (an hour) was 2 people away from the fence in front. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake, since I spent much of their set simply trying to stay upright, and being smooshed into other metal fans. Still, I ended up pretty close to the action (pic) and Dimmu put on a pretty good show. Probably better than last time, I suppose — there were _far_ more people in the audience, and they had just released an album this Tuesday, which gave them some fresh material. The biggest reactions were for “Progenies of the Great Apocalypse” (opener) “The Serpentine Offering” (absolutely fantastic track from the new album along the line of “Progenies”… video here) and of course, the closer, “Mourning Palace” during which I got squished and some dudes near me got into one of the more violent pit fights I’d seen.
Fifty minutes later, I found my car (a security guard for the garage had to walk me to it… I was looking in the wrong building) and drove home.
Overall: good show, though I wish I hadn’t gotten lost and could’ve seen Dark Tranquility… standing squished against tons of other people for an hour+ waiting for Dimmu to come on was very dull and caused a great deal of soreness. Serpentine Offering was pretty cool to see live, as was “Sorgens Kammer Del II” from another album released since the last time I saw them. It was also cool to see Dimmu’s new drummer Hellhammer play, who must be the only drummer perhaps who has his own t-shirts independent from a band. Accordingly, it was the only time I’ve seen an extended inter-song drum solo for this type of music. He’s popular in part because he was the best-known drummer for the first black metal band, Mayhem of whose previous members one suicided, another is permanently institutionalized, and whose guitarist was killed by the bassist. Metal!
Dad and I went to the Berlin Aquarium during my parent’s recent visit, 
