Hole In the Sky 2007, The Gig

The weather was typical of that which we have endured all through this sham of a summer, such a contrast to the beautiful warm sunny evening spent drinking overpriced Norwegian beer outside the venue last year.

Speaking of the it, somewhere before 8pm we wandered off to to find the venue, which I only vaguely remembered how to find (as I had been given a lift there the previous year by my now in-laws). My recollection was mostly right, although it was a bit further along the waterfront than I expected.

We arrived just in time to see an Oz band, Destroyer 666 who ironically I had never bothered to check out in Oz. I kind of enjoyed them, especially from the perspective that this evening was supposed to be mostly all about getting back to the roots of blackened thrash metal.

Next up were Sabbat, who I enjoyed but were not to the taste of my friends at all. I wonder if they knew that Andy Sneap who was having a great time thrashing away on his guitar had been responsible for the production or mixing on some of their favourite recent metal platters.

I did some merch shopping and purchased the new album by Deathspell Omega, which I'd already had on solid rotation on my iPod for a couple of weeks.

Then came the band that had tipped the scales on whether I was going to go to this year's Hole in the Sky or not - Kreator. As almost anyone who grew up listening to thrash in the 80s knows, Kreator were one of the most influential acts from that period. I've always loved the intelligent, thought provoking lyrics of Kreator which have only got better as the band have matured.

To my mind they were fantastic, Petrozza is a great frontman and the sound was pretty good. I was right up the front, dead centre and my only dislike of the show was the realisation that some of the security gurards were seriously overstepping their mark. One guy would stand on some kind of step right in front of me and try to get the attention of people in the mosh who he thought were misbehaving and then stand there and stare them down, a "I'm watching you, don't fuck with me" kind of thing. Really ruined the mood for me every time they did this, and it was a well behaved crowd (as most metal crowds usually are).

Afterwards we chilled at the bar and chatted to various strangers, declining beers from Jens who seemed to have got a lot more friendly, which was a sure sign he was close to having drunk enough.

Bjørn led the way into Immortal, as he and Jens were both dead keen to finally see these Bergen legends live. Due to the chaos of a crowd all intent on the same thing I rapidly lost track of both Bjørn and jens, but found Bjørn again shortly. Immortal's set began and they blew even me away - the improvement since I had seen them in April was astounding. The sound, stage setup, pyrotechnics and of course the actual music were all pretty much as close to perfect as one could desire.

My enjoyment was distracted slightly as I'd texted Jens our location and was surprised when he kept on ringing me, but I couldn't hear a thing over Immortal. Eventually I went to find where he was, and ended up finding him arguing with another security guard. Jens had been ejected because he was too drunk (by my definition he was at the friendly and talkative stage, nowhere near too drunk). I tried to reassure them that he was with us and I would keep an eye on him, but they would not let him back in. Jens did not help by arguing with the guy in Norsk and not letting me, the more sober and rational one sort it out.

So I ended up going back in again, to enjoy the rest of the show. Suddenly Jens appeared next to me, no idea how long he had been standing there before I noticed him, but it was most likely at the beginning of the three song encore. So in the end even Jens got to see some of one of the best Black Metal performances I have ever seen.