Havamal, a slightly folkish death metal band with some Amon Amarth influences, was the band to start out the day for us on the Saturday of Månegarm Open Air. Saturday meant of course that now all bets were off, and bands were allowed to sound metal again!

“How are you? No, that must have been the wrong ear. I said, how are you?! Yes, that was the right ear! God it’s good to be with a Swedish audience, which understands how funny I really am.”
- Björn Larsson (vocals)

Havamal followed a lot of the trends for this festival. Firstly, they were a band I had heard of, but not heard. They had a viking theme running through their lyrical universe as well as their stage costume, and their hairdresser favoured the undercut style with a braid holding the small strip of hair left together. With their roots firmly in the rich soil of death metal, we were in for some growled vocals and riffy music.
Less known to me, we were also in for an enthusiastic crowd, which cheered the band on for just coming on stage, and they were ginning at Björn’s (apparently he wants to go by first name only) jokes. It was a little hard for me, because the lines he gave us seemed rehearsed, with no place for impro or taking in the specific situation we were all in - but hey, a few standard lines are still better than none at all, at least in my experience.

When the music started flowing, we got just what has been described above - heavy, dirty death. I don’t think the keyboard work you hear on the albums was as prevalent here in the live setting, if it was there at all, so the presentation was quite bare bones. Some might prefer that; given I had no previous knowledge of the band, it didn’t move me either way at the time.
What I did enjoy was to see the stringed trio of the band really getting into it with heavy posing (you know we like that), using the entire stage, and really letting their headbanging go wild, an art in which they by far outclassed their vocalist, who on his side delivered what must’ve been the laziest headbanging I’ve ever been witness to. A light forward bend in the body, and a nodding so gentle it didn’t even begin to move his hair. On the other hand, Björn chose to go down into the crowd for a short bit during Jotun War, and that was nice to see.

“This has been an absolute highlight of our career!”
- Björn (vocals)

While the audience’s response had been impressive to begin with, Björn had only limited success in getting a sing-along going for Berserker. Cheering and applause were still loud between songs though.
I sadly wasn’t sold on what Havamal were selling however, and even though they expressed much joy over the gig, I have to admit I was more interested in what would come next.

Setlist (incomplete):

Berserker
Jotun War
The Curse Of Grendel