Thursday night offered another schedule clash – black metallers Taake were at the same time as stoner rockers Clutch. Both bands are heavily hyped, yet neither of the bands have gotten much attention from here.
As you sit here and read, you should be aware of which band we went with in the end...

A clear and beautiful full moon shone over Copenhell as Taake was to call upon the infernal forces to overthrow the world we knew. Or something like that.
Taake had ended up playing on Pandæmonium, the smallest of the three stages at Copenhell, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t pull a crowd – in fact the place was packed and full of anticipation for the coming onslaught.
Hoest came clad in dark robes, and was mostly painted black in the face so it was pretty hard to make out expressions and features in the dark of the night, but I was more surprised about the lack of a Norwegian flag around his shoulders as he has been seen in the past – this might just have been for the Noregs Vaapen tour though.
Performance ways, there wasn’t much to speak about. Hoest and the rest did their job the way they should, horns raised and heads banging, but there was nothing extraordinary or especially captivating about it.

Taake had one thing going for them though. Through many of the other reviews from this years’ festival, an image of oft experienced sound-problems has been painted, but not so for these gentlemen – in fact, in my opinion they sounded better here than what little I have heard of their recorded material!
The songs, of which I know no name, varied between the strict kvlt black metal and sections where the tempo came down to a more rock ‘n’ roll styled fashion, the latter of which definitely spoke more to my personal taste.
Overall though, there wasn’t much I found appealing about this concert – I won’t say it was bad, but it was not something that tickled my fancy. Judging from the headbanging hordes around me, the band hit home with its real fans though, and in the end I guess that is all that really matters. And who can say if I hadn’t felt the same had we instead gone to watch Clutch?