The Contrast of the Beauty in the Dark

Vanum, Sun Worship

Under The Banner of Death Tour 2019 presented by Escape Entertainment and Doomstar Bookings, Escape Metalcorner Wien, Austria 20190430

Vienna, the night before a public holiday. A kind of false weekend and the perfect evening for a nice concert. And so the Escape that normally would have been closed opens its portal for an intimate Black Metal show.

The tour features Ultha in some other cities. The first act here is coming from Berlin with the little bit uncommon name Sun Worship. Lars and Bastian consciously resign of theatrical elements like corpse paint. Less is more, and their music speaks for itself (reminding of e.g. Verschlinger or WITTR), so they don’t need to worry actually when others label them “hipster”. Both know how to shout and Bastian also delivers atmospheric singing through his mic coming from a headband. Lars has his microphone coming from the top like Lemmy used to have it. When standing tall and under the light, the visual impression is accurate anyway.

The wonderful sound takes advantage of the great live mixing by Niitro of Ewig Frost (who will play at Kaltenbach Open Air this summer next to e.g. Enslaved and Mgla). The level of intensity stays high with Vanum from Santa Fe, who recently released their new record “Ageless Fire”. Their live performance is intoxicating. While the bassist holds his head against the wall, the singer is spitting smoke and fire, with the crazy appearance of a David Gunn of King 810. With a proudly swollen breast he plays the bass until it drops out. But as the rest sounds massively huge, it actually doesn’t matter. Still the band ends its set very soon, too soon. Because even though the duration of about an hour is quite ok, the pleasure would have been great to have longer. An amazing concert evening anyway, and thankfully Willi even lets the bar open a little bit longer to have some time to enjoy an after-show drink.