GOD SEED — Live at Wacken (review)

Live album · 2012 · Black Metal

3/5 · 2013-02-18
Warthur

Just imagine: in a parallel universe, this is a Gorgoroth live album. Live at Wacken documents a performance by Gaahl, King ov Hell and a brace of collaborators (none of whom appear on the God Seed debut album) from the 2008 Wacken open air festival, which they performed under the Gorgoroth name since it was in the middle of the infamous Gorgoroth name dispute. Indeed, the DVD of the performance provided with this package makes it clear that as far as King and Gaahl were concerned, they were performing as the official Gorgoroth - the stage is decorated with nude crucified models exactly like the infamous Gorgoroth Black Mass performance in Poland which got the band so much attention.

Of course, it wouldn't last. Infernus won the court case, Gaahl moved on to other musical projects, and King released what music he had prepared for the first God Seed album under the Ov Hell banner. However, it seems Gaahl has had a change of heart and decided to return to metal, because all of a sudden God Seed have returned, King and Gaahl having acquired new collaborators, recorded a studio album, and put out this live release all in a startlingly short period.

The material here offers nothing that Gorgoroth fans won't have already heard; since part of the point of the performance was to assert that Gaahl and King were the "real" Gorgoroth, what we're looking at are a selection of tracks taken from Twilight of the Idols and Ad Majorem Sathanas Gloriam, two of the three Gorgoroth albums on which Gaahl and King both appeared. There are no tracks from Incipit Satan, possibly because Infernus was still Gorgoroth's primary songwriter on that album whilst on the other two King and Gaahl took on almost all the work, but as far as I'm concerned this is a plus since I found Incipit Satan to be decidedly disappointing.

As far as live runthroughs of the "best of" the Gaahl/King ov Hell period of Gorgoroth go, there's a lot to like about this album. Yes, there's no Infernus and so it's not really Gorgoroth (legally speaking at any rate), but even then I think Gorgoroth fans may find it an enjoyable release, with Gaahl and King on good form, their hired guns pulling their weight, and a track list which nicely complements the True Norwegian Black Metal - Live In Grieghallen release. (Indeed, aside from Forces of Satan Storms there's no overlap between the two.)

I wouldn't go so far as to call it essential listening but I certainly don't think I wasted my time on it. Then again, I think it's more interesting to listen to as a historical curiosity than a really tight live album in its own right; the band do a competent but not especially interesting job of performing the material, and the whole spectacle is rather calculated, since it was at least in part an attempt to establish that Gaahl and King's Gorgoroth sub-faction were a real working band and recognised as such by audiences for the sake of garnering ammunition for the legal struggle.