KRATER 2016 – Day 2 – Oslo – Pokalen

Due to a traffic accident I didn’t get there in time to watch Kringa. But Reveal revealed that they are what I’d call an amateurish version of Negative Plane. There were several great parts, but could somebody do a voice operation on the vocalist? You need to have a vocal that fits the music, and these presented at Krater did definitely not. The sound was OK, the audience were a bit reluctant and the vocalist shirt was awful. Well, sometimes something adds to the injury, so to speak. I may sound a bit too negative here, but something you have something that is all fine and then there is this one element, in this case the vocals, that ruins the whole shebang. The music is some kind of melodic and midpaced black metal with strange melodies here and there, but when they played these longer instrumental parts Reveal revealed that they are worthwhile for a few minutes.

Norwegian Whoredom Rife are worthwhile for a lot of minutes. Brutal and sometimes melodic black metal. Great sound, great performance and a fine dose of Nidarosen black metal. They played three tracks from the recently released EP plus three other songs. I won’t say that Whoredom Rife challenge the listener. It’s at times quite straight forward. But the thing is that it doesn’t matter when it is as good as this. They draw you into their brutality and you get a glimpse of air when they do the more midpaced melodic parts, before they punch you in the stomach again and again. Great stuff and I do really look forward to their upcoming album via Terratur Possessions.

Many black metal bands try to create profound, atmospheric darkness. Vorum is not one of them. The Finns’ music is fast and brutal black, yet their debut album had some melodic Watain in it. But if their recent EP "Current Mouth" is something to judge by, Vorum heads in a more vicious and violent direction. The songs are great, the sound was good at Pokalen and the performance oozed of death and destruction. I hope they will release a new album and play live in Norway again the coming year.

After Vorum’s deadly attact, it was great with an utterly boring hard rock band, named Dead Lord. The songs remained the same from what I heard at a safe distance. But it was all fine with something that didn’t need any special attention after the Finns did their best to destroy us, and as a break before my most anticipated event was soon to happen.

The Swedish collaboration of individuals that is named Irkallian Oracle has released one of the top three albums in 2016, and could they live up to it when they played live? Cloaks, hoods and a ritualistic approach opened the show. That many people focused on the vocals lack of underwear probably tells more about them than the vocalist. I mean, Taake, Impaled Nazarene and Havohej, for those of the unlight… The sound was superb this night, the tambourine worked all fine and the vocal was grandiose. Mostly they did the midpaced doomy stuff, with a couple of fast shorties. And it was for sure a ritual. I was drawn into their world, the rhythms were steady and moving forward. Rhythms yes. I looked at the drummer and I must say I became surprised. It sounded to me like the drummer just played some steady rhythms, backing up the music. But what I noticed was that there were fills all the time, the drummer was all over the place, but the whole was done in a quite subtle way. I mean, I had to pay specific attention before I took notice. Irkallian Oracle was a superb show and their performance was all great.

 

I do however think that there should’ve been way more people in Oslo this night. It could be because it was twice the price from the day before, but c’mon, 400 Norwegian Crowns for 6 bands, where three were top notch? It’s a shame. From a more egoistic point of view, I got plenty of space and could enjoy the shows without people passing by, looking at their cellphones all the time while speaking about all these uninteresting things people talk about in life. Kudos to the Krater-festival for arranging a brilliant festival. I’ll be there next time around.