After Degradead it was time for the brutal youths of Zonaria to warm up the old Rock for main act Satyricon.

My first thought as these hard-hitting Swedes began to play for us was; “Did they leave the guitar sound at home or what??” It took almost an entire song before I even got to hear Simon Berglund’s guitar. Actually, throughout their entire show Zonaria was plagued by an unusually poor sound for The Rock standards. As I shortly spoke to Emil Nyström after the show I found out that they had only had time for about five minutes of soundcheck before the concert would begin, so I suppose that is the explanation. Still, it would not have hurt them to get a bit more time…

Anyway, sound or no sound, Zonaria still knows how to deliver a powerful live show, and this was exactly what was given to those who had met up by this time. More were to come, but the audience was still larger than it had been for Degradead before them. Strange thing is, the crowd didn’t seem very into it, not at all like last time as Zonaria visited us in support of Vader. At that time they got the largest response of the evening, this night it seemed to be the exact opposite. Did the sound really have such an effect, or was it something else entirely? I can’t give you a truthful answer; I simply don’t understand it.
I did not feel anything lacking from the bands side, and Berglund tried to get some action started in The Black Omen with appealing to the crowd;”I know Copenhagen has the best moshpits in all of Europe!”
This led to three young guys starting to jump into each other for a while, as everyone else still stood back.
To help things along Nyström got down of the stage for the song after, the speed-freak Praise The Eradication, and showed people how things were supposed to be done; this earned him a few more followers, but as a whole not even this trick managed to get people moving.

Pulling a last trick out his sleeve, Berglund renamed their last song Rendered In Copenhagen to show that Zonaria still holds a desire to rock with us.
After it was done I scribbled down in my notepad “…feels like being run over by a big fucking tank…”; and this pretty much describes the show as delivered.
All in all, I thought it was a good performance which just did not hold up to the one from their last visit. Or as I said to Nyström later; “Great show, but boring audience…”
As an extra I might mention that Lunah (Lauridsen, our house photographer and all the rest) absolutely loved the show, and we both agreed on it being the highlight of the evening.

Setlist:

From The Abysmal Womb
The Armageddon Anthem
The Black Omen
Praise The Eradication
At War With The Inferior
Rendered In Vain