DISSECTION LIVEAthens, An Club, Friday, November 11th, 2004by Panayiotis Papandreopoulos
 The Rebirth of Dissection Tour has passed from our country. A legendary band of the 90ties, which due to Jon Nödtveidt's conviction to imprisonment until recently, was obliged to cancel all music activities until recently. From the current members only Jon is the only founding member, songwriter and frontman since the 1989. The other members are Set Teitan (guitars), Thomas Asklund (Drums) and Brice Leclercq (Bass). The Athenian audience was eager to see and listen how would Dissection sound after 7 years of absence. The concert took place at the friendly but very small for such a band "An Club", which was absolutely packed. The tiny stage is literally in the audience! Practically there is no distance between the band and the crowd. Apart from the obvious disadvantages this could also be a great advantage for really hot performing bands and for fanatic headbangers, provided that accidents and won't happen. I think that whoever plays in this hellpit verges on the borders of strong live crash test.
 Before the beginning of the concert Jon and Set appeared on stage and made a brief ceremony, which included a ritual lightning of candles and self concentration exercises, prey or so. The concert begun with the introductory track "At The Fathomless Depths", followed by "Black Horizons". The audience was frantic and didn't stop throughout the concert, while the band was embraced by these expressions of enthusiasm. Two more dynamites followed: "Frozen" , "Night's Blood" and then the pace slowed down with the very good new track "Maha Kali", which I admit I hadn't heard before and sounded absolutely harmonic and melodic with the necessary proportion of aggression of course. Back to past with playing 6 consecutive dynamites from the "Storm Of The Light's Bane" release: "Soulreaper", "No Dreams Breed In Breathless Sleep", "Where Dead Angels Lie" "Retribution - Storm Of The Light's Bane", "Unhallowed", "Thorns Of Crimson Death". The sonic storm was completed by the "Heaven's Damnation", which exploded our brains. Dissection made a small pause and came back soon. Since they had already played the whole "Storm Of The Light's Bane" (luckily for us), they should give some space to other releases. They did so, starting with the typical NWOSDM (New Wave Of Swedish Death Metal) song "In The Cold Winds Of Nowhere", then playing the "hit": "Elisabeth Bathori" and finally "The Somberlain". The band made a last encore playing "A Land Forlorn".
 The show was over. The performance was almost perfect. It seems the years of absence and the other problems haven’t influenced the band's live abilities at all. One could easily imagine that this show was taken in the mid 90ties, where the band was at its heydays. The set lasted at about 90-100 minutes, which is a satisfactory duration given the small number of releases, and left the best impressions at the hungry Greek audience. No one complained about the set list: "they should have played this song or other", because they simply played almost everything! I bet this show will remain in the memory of the attendees because the released energy was conversely proportional to the size of the small club. One might disagree with the image and the ideas of the band but no one can doubt about their music and above all their live performance abilities. What I like most in this band is the combination of melody with aggression. Otherwise their long lasting songs would have been very boring.
 The only flaw was that the sound was listened a bit "faulty", maybe because the guitars were not arranged loud enough, but I think this was done to prevent sonic deformations. We are eager to listen to their new releases and definitely see them play live again (hopefully in a bigger club). Playlist:
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