MØLLA FESTIVAL, GJERSTAD, NORWAY
Two shows, two different setlists - it’s a neat idea, more bands should do it. To a socially distanced crowd of 150 - and a global streaming audience of many hundreds more - ARCTURUS, Norway’s experimental black metal supergroup par excellence, perform effectively half their entire output since 1994 in two 80-minute sets. Here’s a band who seem to have felt the strain over lockdown, looking and sounding delighted to be playing music together again - especially guitarist Knut and bassist Skoll, beaming and bopping away while ICS Vortex hams up the lunacy, giving unorthodox voice to a range of spectral alien possessors. Hellhammer, of course, remains impassive, laying down his propulsive precision drum barrage without fuss or even apparent effort, while Sverd contorts in the shadows behind his triumphing synth, equal parts 70s prog organ maestro and symphonic black metal wizard. On both nights, the delay between visuals and sound and the occasional momentary dropout provide an unwanted distraction from the cosmic magic onstage, but Arcturus are a richly off-kilter, out-of-step experience to begin with, so what would seem an annoying tech quibble with any other band becomes just another layer of high-concept disorientation in Arcturian hands.
CHRIS CHANTLER