October 6th marks a momentous occasion for the McDonald Theater and Eugene Oregon. It’s the first time the Swedish metal quintuplet of Johannes Eckerström, Jonas “Kungen” Jarlsby, John Alfredsson, Tim Öhrström and Henrik Sandelin, better known as Avatar played in the small college town. I spoke to citizens of Avatar Country that travelled from as far as NYC and Denver Colorado to be with their King here in Eugene. For others, it was their first time seeing Avatar.
Touring along with Avatar are the “Thrashgrass” band The Native Howl with main support from their Swedish countrymen in Orbit Culture. The Native Howl hail from Detroit Michigan bringing their own style of bluegrass with heavy thrash metal influence. It would be easy to dismiss “Thrashgrass” as something that simply shouldn’t work, but a couple of songs in and the crowd at the McDonald Theater was grooving right along. By the end of the seventh and final song, many of us had shaken off any skepticism. Thrashmetal is a thing and it’s fun!
Orbit Culture shifted the pendulum away from the bluegrass into a far more groove metal zone. Opening with “North Star of Nija”, the heavy guitar riffs had the crowd moshing from the onset. The intensity only increased with each song. During “The Shadowing,” lead singer Niklas Karlsson invited the audience to split down the middle, forming a large gap and as the as she song kicked in, he shouted “Eugene, you know what to do” as the left and right sides each ran toward one another with bad intentions. Overall, Orbit Culture played eight songs, closing their set with “Vultures of North.”
Avatar opened their set with “Dance Devil Dance” and the crowd went wild. But that was just the beginning of their incredible performance. When you attend an Avatar show, you know that they’re going to give you every ounce of energy. It’s more than a musical experience. It’s an entire spectacle, both visually and audibly. Johannes spends time during each show to share quips and anecdotes about each city and this performance was no different. He talked about how Avatar was going to touch the audience and that the audience would also be touching them, but not until we had given our informed consent (enthusiastically given, of course). He said that while walking through the town of Eugene (which is more of a person’s name than the name of a city, not unlike “Bob”) that he saw a man doing squats on the railing of a bridge. “Eugene is WEIRD” he went on to say.
Roughly mid-way through their set, during the song “Puppet Show”, there is a drum break down. John was playing and getting slower and slower, then again building back up to full speed again. But, when the band got back up to full speed, lead singer Johannes had relocated up into the balcony. There, he masterfully assembled a balloon animal (a dog… a red dog) and then proceeded to play his trombone along with the band to close out the song.
This tour, titled The Chimp Mosh Pit Tour is in support of the 2022 Avatar album titled Dance Devil Dance. Of the 18 songs on their set-list, 5 of them were from the latest album. “The Dirt I’m Buried In,” which recently topped the billboard chart after a long climb, closed out the show along with Avatar mainstays “Smells Like a Freakshow” and “Hail the Apocalypse.”
This show in Eugene was not only the best Avatar performance I’ve ever seen, but might just be the best ANY show I’ve ever seen. Yes, it was THAT good. Avatar sets the bar for how metal performances can and should be.
Avatar will be closing out this headlining tour on November 5th in Kansas City, then going on to join with another incredible performer, Maria Brink and In This Moment for another huge tour.
