In Absentia Dei

As the world stood still (mostly in non-economy related matters) during the Covid pandemic, resulting in the canceling and postponement of countless shows, Behemoth chose the path of some of their contemporaries - pretending a live show in front of a non-audience, for the audience at home, who was awaiting release from quarantines and lockdown in front of their screens.

What makes this concert unique however, is its production value, the artistic concept, the aesthetic and the final realization. To me, this is not to be considered a 'live' concert with a connected setlist but rather a heavily edited music movie disguised as a coherent live performance. It is an almost perfect symbiosis of music, stage design, dramaturgy, atmosphere and show elements to frontally attack the senses.

I hardly had any point of contact with Behemoth before In Absentia Dei, aside from listening to Evangelion once or twice some time ago. After discovering this year’s Belphegor masterpiece The Devils I came across Behemoth via a detour – doing a similar artists search here on the archives. Previously I was more aware of Nergal’s legal trouble in the catholic wasteland of his home country Poland, facing legal trouble for charges of blasphemy (surprisingly being kind of tabloid superstar there). Obviously not intimidated by the pressures of censorship and legal penalization the stage for the debauchery is set up in an old, abandoned church being private property of some guy (I was not aware such things exist). I assume no more holy rites are held in that place now, since after this performance it is properly and irrevocably desecrated. That church is an excellent place, setting a moody and perversely fitting atmosphere for the things to come.

The flow of the setlist is excellent, with fluent passages from old to new songs. They are browsing through most of the band’s discography, taking songs from ten different albums plus 2 EPs (if my research is correct), resulting in great versatility in style (from early black metal to the later more epic style, from blast-beat mayhem to mid-tempo), resulting in an excellent overview of the bands career. Despite the generally extreme nature of Behemoth’s brand of blackened death, they manage a balance between catchiness and chaos, sometimes quite similar to Greek black metal bands as Rotting Christ or Varathron.

The sound is awesome (thanks to massive post-processing?), very distinguishable. Lacking a better sound system my Blu-ray audio channel is played through the internal TV speakers and even here the sound is clear and powerful. Drummer Inferno is a machine living up to his name, soon getting rid of his face mask (no Covid protection in this case). Bassist Orion is another powerhouse helping out with vocals and would be among equals at the Ascot races with his hilarious hat, adding to Nergals forceful stage presence – a few times he is talking to the imaginary audience with a strong accent (Leechuns!), adding a nice touch by subtracting sterility.

The performance has four acts, with an ever-increasing drama and intensity of show and atmosphere. Music and show elements are beautifully cut together (the cut is not epilepsy inducing) – all fire and embers, pain and pleasure. As an into for the first minutes to build up the atmosphere, four anonymous horsemen (supposedly the band of course) ride through the plains, approaching an abandoned church. They enter through the main gate which is already in flames, and off we go with Evoe previously released on EP.

Act I is the shortest, consisting of 4 mostly short and fast songs, while Act II is much more brooding and doomy, more flames on stage. Act III appears darker and unfathomable and is the longest part of the show finishing strongly with the Amon Amarth-like Chant for Eschaton 2000 (that main riff!!!) From there on, when in Act IV the inverted crosses burn, it is just more fire, skull crushing riffing epicness and blasphemous misbehavior on the stage. My only criticism are some lengths in the second half of Act III, some of the songs here sound quite similar and less special and could have been cut down.

Highlights are the doom and gloom performance of Lucifer, with fake blood dripping from Nergal’s mouth, followed by a weird and intense BDSM performance with some real blood during Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer with a female artist hanging from the ceiling on hooks through her flesh – don’t try this at home. This song is censored from the (at the time of writing) publicly available version from the German/French culture channel arte. Also Nergal’s haunting sermon Chwała mordercom Wojciecha and Inferno playing drums with (animal? human?) bones in the beginning of Bartzabel in parallel to a beer-bellied blood-smeared guy drumming (where the fuck did that one come from, by the way?) are quite memorable and impressive. The show closes on a high note with the visual bombast of the flaming finale O Father O Satan O Sun!.

This publication is a milestone and a reference for other bands how to put together the multiple aspects of artistic vision, music, visual presentation and atmosphere, beating my previous favourite Rammstein's Völkerball. Highly recommended.