Conan Live at Bar Brooklyn, Stockholm

7/10

When I first got my ticket for Conan they were schedueled to play at venue Kraken (Stockholm) like they did last time they were here in Oct 2016, a medium sized club fit to take on anything from soloact singer/songwriter to fullblown metalshow with pyrotechnics. So when the announcement came that the venue would be
changed from Kraken to Bar Brooklyn, a restaurant with a small stage, I was along with many others surprised to this sudden change of venue not to mention the stagetime of 1800. I had never been to Bar Brooklyn before so I was a bit sceptical to the whole thing but Conan is known for delivering a fullblown warensamble of “caveman battle doom” no matter where so who am I to start making assumptions ahead of the show. Lets see how this plays out, big venue or small.
(Caveman battle doom is how the band descibes their music)

Enter Conan…

The feeling of standing right in front of the band and their screaming wall of doom in this small venue is almost intimate eventhough everything about them is heavy, agressive, sludgy and brutal. Every scream from frontman Jon Davis sounds like a warcry on some ancient battlefield and with the punch these guys deliver I would say that big venue or small doesn´t matter when it comes to Conan. They tare into the openingtrack “Prosper on the path” from the new album “Existential Void Guardian” followed by “Eye to eye to eye” also from same album. The mix of songs that follow are from the five albums, Existential Void Guardian, Revengence, Blood Eagle, Horseback Battle Hammer and
Mannos and the mainfocus of the setlist lies on their latest album, as should be expected. Besides the new songs the old were revisited, such as “Throne of fire”
from Revengance, “Hawn as weapon” from Mannos and “Satsumo” from Horseback Battle Hammer.

The audience were banging their heads from front to back of the venue as if they said yes to everything the band threw at them and that is in my book the sign of a great show. The change of venue didn´t matter much to the audience and not to the band either judging by the look on their faces when the place got packed halfway through the set. It would be cool to see them play in front of 5000 people on some festival and then compare this gig to that but I don´t have to do that because if you can reach the audience in a small venue I believe you can on a big stage. Not necessarily the other way around.

Who: Conan

Where: Bar Brooklyn, Stockholm

When: 2018-10-15

Stand out track: Prosper on the path

Rate: 7/10