After a slightly disappointing start by Europe, we hurried over to see what havoc the sons of northern darkness would wreak upon the Sweden Stage as they made not only their long awaited debut at Sweden Rock Festival, but their equally or even longer awaited debut in Sweden.

Darkness had already spread over the hill as we arrived, and a horde of people clad in black was witnessing the ungodly show displayed before them.
After finally making our way over to the left side of the stage I must admit to being impressed with how many people we had to cross paths with on our way over there, especially given the large amount of people also gathered before the somewhat nicer Swedes at the other stage.

For those of you who have had the possibility to see Immortal live before, the show offered no big surprises as Abbath (a.k.a. Olve Eikemo) and Apollyon (a.k.a. Ole Jørgen Moe) shredded with lightning speed and Horgh (a.k.a. Reidar Horghagen) blast-beated his way through song after song. Abbath gave us a taste of his patent ‘crab walk’ and also some fire-breathing (here I must take my hat off in admiration of his courage as the first fire ball was directed directly AGAINST the wind), a mandatory, though not unwelcome, part of the show as it provides a nice change of pace.
If this fire wasn’t enough, it was gratuitously backed by a massive use of the smoke cannons, the likes had not been seen at this festival (at least not by me).
Both Abbath and Apollyon seemed to be in the best shape they had been since the reunion, and all things accounted this was not a half-assed show even though this is still not a genre which has managed to win me over.

As I am not a walking dictionary of Immortal song titles, I can’t give you a complete setlist; but what I can tell you is that the Norwegians filled their 1½ hour of stage time well.
Some titles I did pick up were One By One, Damned In Black and Wrath From Above.