”Kill the lights, they are too white!”
- Jakob ‘Ynleborgaz’ Zagrobelny (all instruments/vocals)

As the darkness of the night came creeping in, so did the blackness of the metal with the last band of the day, the Danish one-man black metal outfit Angantyr.
The name Angantyr is taken from the first Danish king known in literature, but I have a sneaking suspicion that aside from the name and the nationality, there are not many more similarities between the two.

It’s no surprise that Angantyr was considered a headliner in the company of the other bands of day two, after all their roots go back as far as 1997, and since then the band has released four full-length albums and a bit of other stuff as well, whereas the other bands were still all on the demo only stage of their career.
That they were a popular headliner could be seen by the fact that they had pulled the largest crowd of the day, and that it was right in front of the stage already from the beginning of the show.
The show itself was blacker than black (and I’m not just talking about the absence of light), with Ynleborgaz sending us little comments once in a while, like “Good news Denmark, they are closing down the churches” and “Cheers to you children of the night”, between slinging out songs about betrayal, revenge and victory.

Sadly, most (read all) of these songs were slung out without anything really going on in the band. Except for a wildly skin-whipping Loke on drums and a one-time kneeling by Vrede on bass, the band only stood still on their given places with their instruments in hand. Well, that is an obvious place to have them, I’ll give you that, but a bit more action wouldn’t have been a bad thing…
And then, completely out of the blue, Ynleborgaz blew in a mighty horn! Where it came from and where it went a split-second later I cannot for the life of me say, but I’ll tell you what – it may have been astounding for a short while, but it wasn’t enough to save the show. This was especially visible in the fact that the audience was ever so slowly trickling out of the room, some to head home and others just to enjoy another beer in the outside yard.

So what can we learn from this?
Well, for one thing, a record deal and years of experience is no guarantee for a successful live show. Remember, this is not a complaint about Angantyr’s music – it was not to my liking either, but sounded just the way one would expect a low-fi traditional black metal would sound. That’s just not my taste, that’s all.
For another thing, being in a black metal band is in no way an excuse for not having fun and performing, take it from Immortal for one. Angantyr would do well in remembering this in the future if they want the audience to stick around to the last song of the set.

Setlist:

Den Store Krig
Sølverpilens Kald
Slettes Skal Mindet
Nattens Kræfter
Endeløs
Danermordet
Ni Lange Nætter
Svig
Stormen Fra Nord