I wasn't paying much attention to Dornenreich. A Dark/Goth Metal band, they simply fail to captivate a live crowd with their heard-it-all-before brand of weak, melodic, over-synthesized dull-rock; and my mind was left free to drift away to the t-shirt stand as I entered the main room of Rio's.

An ideal venue, Rio's is a small, intimate club; that allows the crowd to stratify nicely around the stage area so each Metaller can find their ideal place to view the show. Whether you want to be within arm's reach of the band down by the small raised platform that serves as a stage; headbanging or knocking someone's teeth out in a frenzy of blood, sweat and hair on the dance floor; slightly further back witnessing the performance from the shadows just beyond; or propping the bar up; there's room for everyone to do what they please and that certainly wins points with me. Nothing I hate more than trying to slamdance in a pit half full of pissed off guys who are only there because there's no room for them to stand anywhere else. Sadly for Dorenreich, the majority of the crowd elect to stay off the dance floor altogether; leaving the frontman to warble at the disinterested as they lurk out of sight of the stage and wait for some music with some balls.

Mystic Circle take to the stage and I decide to move down to the floor. A competent band by whom I'd only heard a single track on CD ("Draginslayer"), Mystic Circle play hard, deathy, black metal; with some interesting and enjoyable synth arrangements one wouldn't usually associate with this kind of heavily Celtic Frost-inspired crunching. On the downside however, the band plays the vast majority of their music at a mid-paced faux blast beat; which leaves the listener constantly on edge with frustration awaiting a true blast beat to kick in and thrash the whole song up. The slow parts are good however - nice drawn out crushing riffs accompanied by those more than competent synths; and for the Black Metal-starved UK the band is a welcome edition to the bill.

Most of the crowd seems to be saving their energy for the headliners however, and it's only when Mystic Circle launch into a furious cover of "Raining Blood" that we get going (finally some real speed!)...And of course once you get into it there's no stopping till the end of the set; so the last three songs were accompanied by the kind of crowd reactions the band deserved: heads a-banging, fists a-pumping and arms a-flailing. Good stuff; especially since the frontman claimed they were suffering from flu. 

And now the moment we've been waiting for. The room darkens and the theme from "The Omen" slowly pours out of the speakers as Marduk descend the stairs to the stage. Strobe lights flash over their faces and highlight their sickly, corpse-painted complexions and the atmosphere is so charged you could jump start a car battery with it.

Those of us down by the stage are twitching expectantly with anticipation as the music builds to a crescendo and cuts out, and like the perfect showman that he is, Legion briefly pauses before raising the mike, taking a deep breath, and then screaming "AAAAZRAAAEEELLLL!!!" whereupon the first track of Marduk's latest album rips through the air like a lightening bolt and the crowd goes ape shit.

How Fredrik Andersson keeps up that relentless barrage of assult from behind his drumkit for over an hour we'll never know, but the band thrash out every song with the precision that has become their live trademark; mixing up old and new material to give a healthy mix of songs from the entirety of their ten year carreer.

Sadly, however, many of the undisputed classics (especially those from Panzer Division Marduk such as "502" and "Fistfucking God's Planet") are missing from the set list - not because of a bias towards their most recent material as one might imagine, but due to a bias towards their older songs. Opus Nocturne and Those of the Unlight are probably the best represented albums in the set list; and this would have bothered the hell out of me if I hadn't heard all my favourite songs from the band's recent releases at Wacken Open Air last year. For me, every Marduk song is a a classic when it's played live, be it old or new; and hearing "Wolves" played alongside "Christraping Black Metal" and alternately screetching out the lyrics, headbanging and windmilling with my friends, and flailing my elbows in the faces of grinning strangers as I get knocked around in front of the stage like a pinball is pretty much my idea of a perfect gig.

Legion is one of the greatest frontmen in Black Metal, encouraging the crowd to yell out chorus lines to the songs; hyping us up with stage banter in between songs, and spotting the fact that I knew all the words to La Grande Danse Macabre and letting me sing a couple of alternate lines with him duirng the second verse...

And at this point I'm made aware of an intersting fact - we're all aware that most black metal bands wear spikes on stage, right? Well, they are not the same spikes you buy in metal merch shops in Germany. No. Legion's spikes are fucking *sharp*; so much so that they punctured my palm and tore a line down my wrist when we shook hands. And *that* impressed the hell out of me.

All in all the show is nigh on as perfect as it can be despite the shocking omissions in the set list and ranks up there as one of the best gigs I've attended. True, Marduk are one of my all time favourite bands; but if they had let me down with a bad sound or sloppy playing I'd have run them into the ground in this review. The fact is, they more than lived up to my ridiculously high expectations (again) and proved that, especially now Emperor have retired from the live circuit, they are healthy contenders for the greatest Black Metal live act currently performing.