It was a nice sunny morning in Copenhagen, I was residing in the beautiful Christianshavn and went out to get a pain au chocolate and a coffee to kick the day into gear, before going over the bridge to the city, to seek out a nice lunch before Copenhell started to call, where my goal was to catch SATURNUS, I did catch the last 3 or 4 tracks by them, though that was enough to see, on stage, what I’ve seen many times before, the masters of Danish Death/Doom delivering their goods, and the usual ending of the set with ‘Christ Goodbye’ always sends shivers down the back of an old fan.
But before I was headed for Refshaleøen where Copenhell took place, I had to get some lunch and as the motherfucking brutal Heavy Metal fan I am, I went to Lumskebugten, a nice lunch restaurant run by one of the legends in Danish cuisine Erwin Lauterbach. Sitting in the sun eating Danish white Asparagus with crushed black pepper and sauce hollandaise, beef tartare with eggyolk, oyster and salmon roe, drinking pilsner from Fur, a nice little island out in the Western part of Denmark, that’s Metal life. Metal life indeed materialized, when 2 pretty young ladies got a table not far from me, sporting their Copenhell wristbands, while eating a couple of good looking open sandwiches.
After lunch one should think I was headed for some music, but no, the sun was shining and the weather was just damned perfect and when I found a winebar, with an empty table in the shadow, not of the horns as DARKTHRONE would have preferred, but a tree, I had to have a glass of wine or two. It was at Ved Stranden 10, just across Christiansborg, nice service and nice wine, and a little chat about Copenhell and Metal nowadays.
Now I was ready to conquer Copenhell and catch a little SATURNUS before a little bit of SABATON, I dug the first record, but man, it has become a parody on classic Heavy Metal, but nice to see the mighty SNOWY SHAW in live action, he still has it! And the sun was still shining, before I went to see GRAVE, which I had been looking forward to.
Not long before GRAVE was about to enter the stage, all hell broke lose, rain and a few lighting bolts over Copenhagen, and then a hell of a lot rain, and then more… Though GRAVE has played in worse conditions in Indonesia, so they took the stage after a small delay and kicked some serious ass, while it was pissing down during their set, though Ola and company didn’t give a fuck and delivered their Death Metal without compromise and did bring some heat back into the energetic crowd.
The wettest show I’ve ever witnessed, but still asskicking beyond belief, I’ve been with GRAVE for a long time, and this was, how sad it sounds, the first time I caught them live, and they didn’t let me down, one single bit! I also think they did play ‘After Forever’ without being a 100% sure, though after all the weather was beautiful!