View Gallery

The band Satyricon finally found their way back to Montreal on this Deep Calleth Upon Deep tour on May 24th. Panzerfaust and Goatwhore were the other band in this black metal night at the Corona Theatre.

As expected, the place is almost empty when Panzerfaust starts their set. The musicians are immobile on stage and you can see a hooded Goliath singing behind an altar located behind the drum. Their intense music is precise, but it does not seem to capture the crowd’s attention. Their short performance seemed almost like a very long song as there was no real interaction with the crowd.

Goatwhore came on stage shortly after and really got the crowd going with their mix of death and thrash music. Following Ben Falgoust’s indications, the crowd started thrashing and making circle pits. The musicians were very dynamic on stage, but sadly their sound was very poor, and it was hard to distinguish all the instruments at times. As expected, the band played many songs from their latest album (Vengeful Ascension), but the crowd was louder during the older songs likes “Apocalyptic Havok” and “FBS”. Once again Goatwhore did a great job and really got the crowd ready for the headlining band.

Few set changes are needed prior to the arrival of Satyricon, but that does not stop the crowd from screaming their name as they anxiously await their return to Montreal after a hiatus of 18 years. As expected, their newest album is well represented with five songs, but sadly most of the song selection for this North American farewell tour are taken from their most recent albums. The crowd got very active during the song “Black Crow On A Tombstone” as well as during the other older songs like “Walk The Path Of Sorrow”, “Mother North”, “Transcendental Requiem Of Slaves” and “Commando”. Even if the musicians are not extremely dynamic on stage, they are intense, and Satyr interacts with the crowd constantly. The fans thrashed, did many circle pits and a few did some crowd surfing. The expectations for this night was high and the band gave a great performance, even if the abundant use of the strobe lights was too much for many fans that had a hard time looking at the stage during their whole set and seemed relieved during the short moments when they were not used. One can now only hope that band’s love for Montreal will make them come back on their decision not to play in North America in the future.