Behemoth have dubbed their current North American tour The Godless IV Tour, presumably a reference to the blasphemous nature of the four bands on the bill – the Polish four-piece plus tourmates Deicide, Rotting Christ and Immolation. But on Monday night, Toronto only got two out of the four due to some unforeseen circumstances as Immolation and Rotting Christ had to drop out after their van broke down somewhere along the line. Still godless enough for the show to go on, just with 50% less blasphemy.
Giving a shout out to their missing tourmates near the start of their set, Behemoth frontman Nergal noted that while Rotting Christ and Immolation couldn’t make it for the Toronto show, they were still on their way and would be there for the following night’s Montreal show. Good to hear, but still cold comfort for Toronto fans, especially those more interested in the undercard, which, if some of the online comments I saw are to be believed, included at least a few people in attendance.
One upside (as in upside-down cross) of there now only being two acts on the bill was that Deicide ended up playing a significantly longer set that usual on this tour because as Glen Benton put it, “the other guys broke down.” As he told the crowd though, he didn’t mind doing so: “I’m here anyways.”
One benefit of Deicide playing a longer set than normal was that it allowed there to be a few surprises in the set. In this age of setlist.fm, it’s sometimes hard to avoid peeking at spoilers beforehand – I’ll admit i had a look – so it was nice to see a few old classics like “Satan Spawn the Caco-Daemon”, “In Hell I Burn” and “Lunatic of God’s Creation” thrown in as extras. Of the latter, Benton even commented at the end, “Bet you weren’t expecting that.”
Having missed out on catching Deicide live back in their ’90s heyday, I’d only seen the band once before, just a couple of years ago at Lee’s Palace and, well, to be completely honest, while I enjoyed that set for nostalgic reasons, they didn’t necessarily sound all that great that night. I’m not sure if they were having an off night or if it was simply the sound mix, but I walked away from that one just a little underwhelmed. On Monday night at History though, presumably at least in part due to a sound system that surely must have been much more extensive than that of Lee’s Palace, the band sounded great.
By the end of the night, even with only half the original lineup intact, Behemoth and Deicide made up for the unfortunate absence of the other two bands, offering up plenty of sacrilege and fully living up to the Godless IV Tour name … even if the math didn’t quite add up.
