Due to some unexpected schedule changes, Graveworm was the first band for us on Sunday, the third day of Metalcamp.

The crowd was only midsized for the Italian death-squad, and not very lively. Perhaps two days of massive festival life was beginning to take its toll, I don’t know.
Up on the stage, Graveworm let their brutal music roll over us like a flood, accompanied by some wild headbanging from the string-benders of the band. Vocalist Stefan Fiori didn’t settle for such calm performing however, as he showed great vitality in running from side to side of the stage, and he really worked to get the tired crowd off their asses, figuratively speaking. Both his invitations to a mosh and the increasingly popular wall of death met with some success, especially the latter, but the bulk of the crowd were still mostly there just to watch and listen.

Something that did stir an emotion in people was when Fiori promised a band-shirt to the person who killed the inflatable blue fish which someone had brought to the show. People sheered, and even the owner seemed to think it was fun, that is until someone actually came after it, at which point he became very protective of it. It managed to survive for a song or two before meeting its unavoidable fate.
After its demise, the carcass was purposely thrown up on stage, and the proud hunter received his reward.

Graveworm’s music was definitely brutal enough, but in my opinion it takes more than just waving your hair around to make a good live-show, and here the guys fell a bit short. It just wasn’t that interesting to watch.
Graveworm are also known for making very personal covers of all sorts of music; although, if they played any of these songs here or not I’m not sure, as it was simply impossible to hear.
In the end, they also had to cut their set an entire 15 minutes short to make place for Sonic Syndicate, who for some reason had been bumped up a day in the schedule. I would imagine this wasn’t something that went well with the fans...