The date was the twelfth of the twelfth of the twelfth, and the location was Amager Bio.
The night was cold and dark, and so was the music.

“We’re going to have a good, good extreme metal evening! Especially for our old school fans, hmm?”
- David Vincent (bas/vocals)

Morbid Angel, as well as Fueled By Fire and Nile, was on tour with Kreator, and part of it took them by Denmark and Copenhagen, a great reason to go check them out. Not that I have ever been much of a fan of the bands musical efforts, but in later years I have grown to enjoy their live shows, and that certainly also counts as something!
Morbid Angel was the third band of the evening, playing last before the headlining show, and even though their many years in the business, as well as their immense popularity among the fans (even after the much debated latest offering, Illud Divinum Insanus), could easily have put them at the top of many a tour, they seemed perfectly content being the main supporting band this evening.
Diving directly into Immortal Rites, the first track off their debut album Altars Of Madness, they proved both that they were still very capable of ripping it up old school (even though Vincent had added his later days vocals to it (which in my mind works better than in the original which doesn’t have them)), and that the Danish fans were with them all the way!

“Copenhagen, for a Wednesday night you’re pretty fucking rowdy aren’t you?!”
- Vincent (bas/vocals)

We didn’t know it at the time of course, but the large crowd getting watching Morbid Angel would be the largest crowd this evening would see, not even headliner Kreator got this many visitors (why I really cannot say). And simply calling it watching would be the understatement of the year actually, people were really getting their kicks for this show!
Of course it started out a bit stiff as it always does, with mostly some intense headbanging in the front, and loud cheers between songs (especially for the comment about the old school fans), but it didn’t take long for the audience to get more active, with a large mosh opening up the floor, and despite the guards best efforts we even got to see a few stage divers! Not that it came as such a large surprise, what with the stage being extended in the middle reaching the security fence, which made it easy for the audience to climb up, and hard for the guards to get them…
Anyway, the ones who got up there were certainly happy about what they achieved, and the band didn’t seem to mind either, they just pulled a little to the side to make room for the ones who were getting ready to jump, so I guess there wasn’t much of a damage.

The band themselves were a bit more mixed, I’d have to say. Vincent was quite cool to look at, giving a rather rock ‘n’ roll’ish performance despite the aggressive music, throwing off poses left to right and also being the only one walking around. Behind the kit, Tim Yeung was beating the living daylights out of the skins, easily proving why he has been named one of the worlds’ fastest drummers!
On the guitar side things were not as interesting though; newest string-bender in the band, Thor Anders ‘Destructhor’ Myhren was probably the more interesting of the two, but still didn’t do much apart from playing, and only (very) occasionally lifted his head to make eye-contact with the crowd or headbang a little. Long-standing original Trey Azagthoth on the other hand was securely locked away behind his wall of hair, just the way we are used to not really see him; sure, he bent a bit back and forth while playing his solo’s, but that was about it from his side. Not even when he had the stellar opportunity to show off in his solo time on stage after Chapel Of Ghouls did he put more effort into it, heck, he didn’t even go centre stage but kept his place to the far right where it was a bit darker…

Azagthoth’s solo wasn’t the only time the band got to have a little breather though; giving further evidence of his fast feet action, Yeung managed to play so fast that he broke the bass-drum pedal during Pain Divine!
It took some time to find and install a replacement, during which the band left at first, but after a short while Vincent returned and jammed with the bass riff from Black Sabbath’s Hand Of Doom to keep us entertained. The pedal gave further issues later in the set, but not so troublesome that the show had to be stopped again.
Still, the break was (most likely) the cause of the setlist for the evening being shortened by one song – on the paper for the evening, the last song was to be World Of Shit, but instead of playing this, the show stopped after God Of Emptiness. Even so, I wouldn’t say that the issue only brought bad things with it; on the contrary, prior to the accident the band had seemed tense and slightly off, not very interesting to put it simply, but afterwards they, instead of tensing up even more, seemed more relaxed and ready to really work for getting the performance on the road again, something I’m glad to say they managed rather well!

After what felt like a rather short set, and minor setbacks aside, Morbid Angel were able to leave the stage triumphantly, with the loud cheers of a well-filled Amager Bio at their backs.
It wasn’t their absolute top performance ever, but it was good and it was entertaining, very fitting for a support show, and clearly the main band that the Copenhagen crowd had left their comfy sofa’s to go and see this evening.

Setlist:

Immortal Rites
Fall From Grace
Rapture
Pain Divine
Maze Of Torment
Existo Vulgoré
Nevermore
Lord Of All Fevers
Chapel Of Ghouls
Solo (Trey Azagthoth)
Dawn Of The Angry
Where The Slime Live
Bil Ur-Sag
God Of Emptiness