Amon Amarth at The Norva, Norfolk, VA, 4/28/09 With Goatwhore, Skeletonwitch, and Lazarus A.D.

While I can’t say I’ve been to a great many, The Norva remains my favorite concert hall. The  sound quality is superb, the place is shaped perfectly, there’s plenty of space, and most of all, the crowds are usually totally into it. Amon Amarth isn’t one of my favorite bands, but I do enjoy them, and I knew seeing them at the Norva would be all the more worth it. AA has the perfect sound for a live show – their songs are all sweepingly epic and grandiose with plenty of heaviness and emotion. Therefor, it was a must-go.

I went with a pretty large group this time. My good friend Zerodyme is a huge Amon Amarth fan, so he’d been looking forward to it. My brother was there, as well as my guitarist friend who can play most Amon Amarth songs and was also enjoying his first concert ever. My cousin/roommate Funeral was there, and he paid the ticket of this chick who he and Zerodyme are friends with (I don’t like her) that loves the band. We’d all been accusing Funeral of dating this chick, which he denied, but they flirted through the whole fucking show to the point that I’m not even sure where their attention was. As such, I officially stamp them both with ‘concert lameness’ even if Funeral got into a couple mosh pits.

The first band was Lazarus A.D. (who I want to note has a really well-designed myspace and had the distinct knowledge to use Vimeo to upload their music video in insanely high quality.) Their front man had a habit of being borderline-unintelligible between songs and had some gall asking the crowd to drink and smoke him up tonight. Their music was pretty straight-up thrash metal, but it didn’t suck. There were some sweet riffs and solos here and there, with some exhibits of technical skill. Their songs were well-structured and fun and they had good energy, so all around it was a good performance.

Next we had Skeletonwitch who played purely chaotic blackened thrash metal with song lengths all in the 2-3 minute range. There was a sort of duality here – on the one hand, they ripped out some immense riffs and solos through the set, usually once per song (one of the dueling solos was awesome). However, those great parts were bookended by generic riffs of no interest that made every song come out sounding the same. They had some great energy, especially the vocalist, who was all over the place doing mic tricks and other symbols and stuff and generally being a cool and fun guy. Overall a good performance, but I’d hesitate to listen to them on recording.

Then we had Goatwhore (not worth linking), who was one of those acts that made you wonder ‘why the fuck is this shitty ass band popular?’ It must just be their band name. If they played one different note the whole show, I missed it. There wasn’t even enough energy in their music to make me headbang. After a few songs of the exact same chugging riff and top-string bass ‘playing’, my brother and I went upstairs, sat down, and spent the rest of the set joking about how shitty they were. And then those motherfuckers had the gall to at one point call themselves ’southern black metal’ saying they had ‘taken it from those crazy Norweigens’ and then later claimed to be a ‘crazy mix of black metal and viking metal’. FUCK THEM, especially if they think they have any talent, and they are definitely the most generic kind of death metal. Unlistenable garbage.

Amon Amarth was exactly as amazing as expected. The guys put on a hell of a show, all having an immense stage presence and enjoying the hell out of themselves. The lead singer had a huge, awesome beard, and he spoke with a mighty voice about Viking spirit. He had a beer horn strapped to his side which he drank deep from and at one point the whole band had a toast to the audience and each downed a whole horn in epic manliness.

Their set was excellent, going through all their singles and fan favorites. There was a great variety of sound, though all of it heavy and epic. They tore it open with Twilight of the Thunder God, ripped through a slew of monster tracks with immense power, and had a two-song encore with Cry of the Blackbirds and Pursuit of Vikings, which were the two songs I looked forward to the most for their insanely epic choruses. Zerodyme and I, having sung Cry of the Black Birds together hundreds of times over the past couple years, took heavy metal stances and used every bit of our remaining energy to go as crazy as possible.

The most defining part of their show for me was the headbanging. AA is known for their insanely epic simultaneous headbanging, namely windmills (see the video to Runes to my Memory). As such, my brother and I, known for our endurance and extremity of headbanging, tried to keep up. I think I headbanged harder during Runes to My Memory than I ever have in my life, which is a huge statement for me, and I didn’t let up through the whole show (still suffering the repercussions >_<). Those guys’ headbanging is simply glorious – I hope to one day match up to it.

All in all, it was an amazing performance, even if I’m not a huge Amon Amarth fan. I have a lot of respect for the band’s skilled songwriting, excellent technicality, and huge charisma. If you like the band at all, they are more than worth seeing, even if you have to suffer through Goatwhore.