Never heard of Firespawn? Don’t worry, neither had we until just recently. Just to quickly break it down, Firespawn is a Stockholm death metal collective – you’ve got your Entombed A.D. in L. G. Petrov (vocals) and Victor Brandt (guitar), you add a little Unleashed with Fredrik Folkare (guitar), and a bit of Necrophobic in Alex Friberg (bass), and top it off with some ex-Dark Funeral in Matte Modin (drums).

“I’ve got a beautiful view from up here, and I don’t just mean the mountains. I see you headbangers out there!”
- L. G. Petrov (vocals)

Let’s just be upfront and honest here. No one’s really moving outside of their comfort zone with this band. What had caught our attention in the first place, besides the band members, was that Petrov was apparently supposed to do clean vocals in this constellation. Well, sure, there was clean singing, but it was limited to an absolute minimum. Other than that, Firespawn gave us straight up Stockholm death metal, nothing more, nothing less. Which begs the question, exactly what does this band have to offer, except for a joy to play together? Hard to tell, but hey, I guess you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.
At least, there was the joy of playing together. Petrov for one, was on fire! He may have been a bit drunk as well, but whatever floats your boat, you know. He managed to rile up the audience with a “hey” chant already in the second song, and later he would rile people up even more by shouting “Abbath”, to which he got a round of resounding “Abbath”s in reply! Much amusement ensued, as you can imagine.
The rest of the gang walked around, looking tough, and headbanged once in a while, but that goes with the territory. It was fun seeing Brandt on guitar instead of bass, but other than him handling more strings, there really wasn’t much of a difference from his usual performance. His usual performance is pretty good though, so I’m not complaining.

The rain was finally waning, and people were slowly coming out of the safety of the bar tent. I’ve seen larger crowds, no doubt, but it was shaping up nicely. There were a lot of Swedes in the crowd, possibly all the Swedes that visited Metaldays, and this didn’t go unnoticed by the band, where Petrov shouted that it was nice to feel that they were among friends.
The crowd had a funny side as well, as evident by the reply Petrov got when he asked how to say thank you in Slovenian – “play faster” someone shouted back at him!
It never got wild in front of the stage, but this can most likely be attributed to the bad weather that we’ve touched upon so many times already in our Metaldays reviews from this year. Still, people seemed to enjoy themselves, and gave a good response whenever the band asked for it, or simply when they felt like it between songs.

I wasn’t blown away by this, mostly due to the above-mentioned fact that I simply couldn’t make out the reason for this band. If I closed my eyes, it could just as easily have been Entombed A.D. playing some new songs. Petrov’s good mood was infectious though, and I was never bored.

Setlist (incomplete):

Imperial Burning
Infernal Eternal
Full Of Hate
All Hail
The Reprobate
Necromance
Serpent Of The Ocean