Pumpehuset was inviting to an evening of full-on, no frills and uncompromising death metal in cold February.
The evening had begun with a concert by Disintegrated, followed up by Dreadlord, and for the grand finale we saw no one less than Iniquity.

Iniquity is one of those classic Danish death metal acts from back in the day (the 90’ies that is), starting out in 1989 and hanging up the hat in 2004, where some of the members put more effort in the already existing band Corpus Mortale instead.
Fast-forward to 2013, and the band decided to get back together for a limited set of concert and festival dates. The line-up is that of the EP The Hidden Lore, and 2013 also marks the 15th anniversary for this specific, release which was very appropriate. If you were wondering, this line-up consists of Martin Rosendahl on bass and vocals, Brian Eriksen and Jens Lee on guitars, and Jesper Frost Jensen on drums.

In the venue, people were now cluttering and pressing in on the stage, finally showing interest in the music that was coming, and out of the speakers a piano played intro was rolling out, marking the oncoming storm that this death metal band was going to bring us – and quite right, as soon as the intro had played out, we were thrown into the fury that was Tranquil Seizure, and so we were off!
Well, sort of anyway; during the opening song, Frost Jensen dropped both of his sticks on the floor, and it took some time to gather up some new ones with which to go on playing. Not that this minor incident had held the rest of the band back though, they kept on playing and the only thing revealing that they were aware of that there was something wrong was a split-second sideways glance to see what was going on.
Luckily, this was the only real problem the band ran into, and through the rest of the evening it was quite fun to keep an eye on Frost Jensen as his concentration was now pushing near beyond the 100 percent as he violently whipped his skins.
The rest of the band was rather calm though, and that is putting very gently indeed! Sure, there was a bit of headbanging, especially from Eriksen, and a bit of talking once in a while from Rosendahl, but it really didn’t amount to much if you ask me. Lee was mostly trying to hide behind that giant effect-board of his, and didn’t try to attract too much attention to himself, settling for just delivering the music.

Even though the members of Iniquity were doing even less in their performance than Dreadlord had before them, the crowd was still completely on their side. To my mind, there are two major factors for this; the first is definitely the nostalgia factor. Iniquity have been split up for a very long time (just about ten years), but back in the day they were apparently one of the more well-liked bands on the scene (this was before my time, mind you) and apart from making popular music, they also have a lot of friends in the scene. No doubt people were glad to hear the old tracks live again, and when Rosendahl was reminiscing about his first show with Iniquity, apparently at this very venue some 16 years ago, I’m sure a lot of the mature part of the audience could follow him right back there for a while.
The second factor was that, also unlike Dreadlord, the members of Iniquity weren’t at all apologetic about being on the stage playing for us; they were exactly where they wanted to be, doing exactly what they wanted to do, and that sort of thing can certainly also grab the most indifferent crowd.
Hence, people were applauding, screaming and moshing to their hearts delight.

Up on the stage, Rosendahl admitted to having no idea as to what the song Serenadium was about, and he also found the time to dedicate Son Of Cosmos to the memory of Brian Petrowsky, founding member and first vocalist of Iniquity who regrettably past away in 2011.
Apart from these little comments, and other like them, there was still no real action in the band though, and even though this apparently didn’t bother the main body of the crowd, I thought the band got off a bit too easy this night. For me, it takes more than just delivering song after song, even when this is done very well, to make a live show, and I didn’t feel like I got a whole lot more than that here in Pumpehuset.
I will bow enough to public opinion to say that this was a mighty popular show, but I will not lie and say that it did anything special for me.

Setlist:

Tranquil Seizure
Spectral Scent
The Hidden Lore
Encysted And Dormant
Desiderated Profligacy
Serenadium
From Tarnished Soil
Son Of Cosmos