Immortal (Salzburg - Rockhouse - 07.12.00)
Written by: Anja Frkovič

This was one of those concerts when you are almost sure it's not in your destiny to see it. This time it was because of financial problems. When we got to Jesenice that's real close to Austrian border) I realized that I had left all my money at home. We calculated all our expenses and decided to try our luck. We thought we have just enough money to make it but as it turned out later we forgot about the tunnels on the Austrian side. But we were lucky. We all got the passes so we had enough money for and the tunnel fees and things like that to get back home safely.
We got to Salzburg one hour before the concert. Tour manager took us to Abbath and Iscariah and we arranged to the interview with Iscariah immediately.
We missed some of the show because of the interview but it wasn't that important really. There was some boring death metal band playing. I didn't even bother to remember their name (if I ever knew it anyway).
I was relieved to see Primordial getting on stage. That was when I noticed that the sound was excellent. I was amazed by the singers vocal abilities (excellent mixture of grim and clean vocals). And I have to say the show was very interesting because of the singer's theatrical performance - Maja said he reminds her of Don Kihot, only in the metal scene. They played the songs from most of their albums for almost an hour. If you get a chance to see them perform, do not miss it! It is definitely worth seeing.
Nevertheless, we were all anxiously awaiting for Immortal to show up and when they did the crowd went crazy. What followed was two hours of majestic black metal. I had a lot of problems with standing on my own two feet since the people in the first row went not only crazy, but totally mad. In the middle of the show, when Abbath was playing with fire, smoke started to come out of my bagpack. We spent the next few minutes trying to put the fire out. There were also one time when I had to throw myself of the stage (where I was sitting) into the crowd if I wanted to keep all my hair and eyebrows. Anyway, this concert was not comparable to the one we saw a couple of years ago in Ljubljana. They played mostly the songs from the last two albums, At the Heart of Winter and Damned in Black. The songs sounded even better then they do on CDs.
I have to say that this was one of the best concerts I've ever seen, if not the best. After the show we listened to Immortal's At the Heart of Winter on our way home for whole five hours. It is a shame that good concerts are so hard to find... but that's a good thing in a way because that way we learn to appreciate them.