Florida Death Metal pioneers Obituary arrived in Hannover on 21st October 2016 for the beginning of their ‘Battle of the Bays’ European tour with the Thrash-legends Exodus and Groovers Prong. As if this wasn’t enough of a legendary formation, Grind-Sludgers King Parrot were also included as part of this evening for what was going to be a brutal night!
King Parrot opened to maybe a quarter-filled venue. But the few people that were in front of the stage celebrated the beginning of the evening. I will describe the guys on stage as briefly as I can – crazy, incredibly mad and just crazy. This band was worthy as an opener for the evening, both musically and performance wise through their front man. They were funny to watch and the overall performance was great.
Next up was Prong and the venue was instantly full of people, which is nice so early in the evening! Prong started with the powerful song “Eternal Heat” and the hairs of the audience began to rotate. The guys on stage supported the dynamics of the audience with their own performance on stage. The set-list was groovy and powerful and they played classical songs like “Whose Fist Is this Anyway?”, “Sense of Ease” and even of course, “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck”! as the last song of their stage time. They were an insanely great piece of the evening!
A beer later, the intro of Exodus’ song “The Ballad of Leonard and Charles” began, and suddenly the beers of the audience weren’t relevant anymore as a moshpit, flying beer cups and headbangers appeared everywhere. Oh boy, what an energy within the venue. I was really surprised about that, but I didn’t have time to think about that, because I was forced to headbang! The moshpit moved the whole concert to songs like “Blacklist” or “War Is My Shepard” even a short snippet of Slayers’ “Raining Blood” made the people scream and powered up the ghost inside the venue. Closing with “Strike of the Beast” drilled out the last energies of the people.
Last, but not least were Obituary! “Redneck Stomp” followed by “Centuries of Lies” opened the performance of the guys and already at the first chords the audience became even crazier than before. I didn’t think it could be possible, but there were more people directly in front of the stage and the moshpit was bigger than it had been all evening. The whole concert was full of power and sometimes groovy parts played in half time that invited the headbanging. The track “Slowly We Rot” from 1989 was the last one for the night and it finished the evening just quite right! This was, for me as a “young boy” a nice experience to see them live on stage finally!
I was very impressed about this evening. The people were in a fine mood, the bands were awesome, the sound was brilliant everywhere in the venue and the light show, too. In my opinion, this was the best evening in Hannover this year so far. Seriously, worth it!
