In recent years founding bands which unable to do big tours back when they were revealed as genre-builders, have emerged to undertake the professional tour experience now that they can do so easily.
Beherit’s Prague concert is a part of a broader phenomenon seen lately. A tad belated? Perhaps. Most deserved and welcomed? Definitely. But if any potential critique may apply completely regardless of it, one must consider first if he is questioning the very idea of Beherit concert, the setlist chosen for live setting, or simply the execution and the sound.
As for the first aspect, Nuclear Holocausto Vengeance (NHV) was never really as opposed to the idea of playing live as certain other black metallers famously were. Here it was more of a matter of convenience, resources available at the time and perhaps a bit of sensible self-restrain, ultimately cemented by a slight change of musical interests of the artist himself.
What actually is against this idea is decades of conditioning oneself with the music of Beherit with only the single one rendition available, in which it seemed destined to remain forever, like nostalgia or a funeral oration. As for the second aspect, NHV stated that the setlist will be flexible, depending on many factors and that no gig shall be alike.
Usually, there is also a question of releasing one particular gig over others, perhaps better, but with Beherit the conditions are not of abundance, but of scarcity and with its live performances being more of an exception than a rule there is a good reason for nothing else but just celebration and feasting.
There’s almost a sense of urgency to encapsulate something, anything, from what still yet might turn out to be a very brief window of opportunity, as the band may dissapear from the stages as quickly as it appeared. The set immortalized on Live in Praha seem to take into account the wishes of modern audience the most, and the earliest, proto-war metal side of Beherit appears to be very popular among them.
The band certainly have enough of such songs to avoid entirely any problematic discrepancies, but the record is still cross-sectional enough to suffer some losses along the way, as averaging material that is too broad and varied guarantees that some versions will end up diminished.
What on this occasion was almost completely absent (not counting intros and interludes) however, are the electronic phases (both the mid 90s and the most recent one). Part of the reason why genre that used to be, without much distinction, called black ambient (which besides ambient actually consisted of various synth genres, ritual music, darkwave, neoclassical, medieval, folk, etc., but created by musicians mainly associated with black metal) was accepted like practically in no previous generation of metalheads before is because it was ingrained in the same idea as black metal, merely mirrored in different light.
It is possible that because of this it also was much simpler formally and aesthetically less flourished than the works of the usual artists in that field, as it was ordered (“limited”) by some of the same rigours and focus which are also one of the main draws of metal. And in case of Beherit it wouldn’t be unthinkable to actually get predominately electronic set with large swathes of ambient only sporadically interspersed with metal and with as much of a mindfuck in the chillout room as DJ Gamma-G could possibly unleash.
It’s the performing the songs from Drawing Down the Moon that remains an especially risky task here. With Beherit there is much more at stakes than with other bands playing primitive black metal as Beherit is also the ambiance, the aura, there is this beautiful, mysterious calmnes and sinister, digital vibe in it. With that album Beherit created one of those truly singular entities in the best metal tradition and it is here where there is the most to loose in live setting. Simply having the structure right doesn’t necessary lend itself to sucessful rendition.
As in a carefully prepared ritual where absence of one ostensibly neglible element basically cancels the whole ordeal. Here’s where the riffs simply being in place may prove insufficient to raise this entity as there was also a tone, a current, which on the album sola structura carried but as a vessel. Perhaps “The Gate of Nanna” appears just too soon, before the band was warmed up and already really attuned with the surroundings, But instances of loosing some details happens also later, ones in “Solomon’s Gate” and then the others in “Sodomatic Rites,” where normally there are subtle, yet important dissonances stirred up.
The most optimal material appears to be that taken from 2009’s Engram with its modern digital sound and whose songs could as well occupy the whole set as it’s kind of an album which is unconcivable to listen to in any other way than in its entirety.
Despite lacking a bit of depth by not being punctured harder with electronic buzz, it presents more elegantly than songs from The Oath of Black Blood because of more strict, less chaotic construction and more completely than songs from Drawing Down the Moon simply due to less distance to time and technology in which it was created.
Nonetheles its presence is limited to just two songs at the very end of the album, where slow unfolding of “Demon Advance” would be more preferable choice over lengthy but uneventful “Lord of Shadows and Goldenwood,” especially, that the latter is immediately followed by more bouncy cuts from Engram.
Live in Praha CZ was already declared as one of the best releases of 2025 on a meager, ever-shortening Deathmetal.org annual list. All things considered, what we got is on its own just acceptable live album. Like Entangled In Chaos crossed with Death Comes In 26 Carefully Selected Pieces and similar dilemmas to Graveland’s live albums, it’s a fruit of ungrateful art of settling on some workable compromises. But among those delivered throughout the years by classic bands from death and black metal underground (whose official live releases all too often seem to be unable to compete with humble bootlegs), it shall be counted as one of the more memorable and accomplished.
The only thing that’s left to wish for is now for Summoning to grace us in 2026 with their live performance, ushering us not only into their own creations, but into a completely new era of metal as a whole.
Out 20 February, 2026 Via Solistitium Records Words by: Courtney Stark Fire has a unique way of outliving memory and rarely announces itself as myth. The great blaze that consumed the town of Uppsala in Sweden in 1702 remains less a legend than a solemn, architectural reminder that cities — and belief systems — are […]
