FORT WAYNE, IN | Last Thursday night, Ft. Wayne, Indiana’s glorious Clyde Theatre hosted Sweden’s mighty Avatar. A night off from the Kiss of Death Tour Part 2 with Ice Nine Kills and In this Moment, Avatar took the opportunity to fully dominate a stage; fans had the band all to themselves for a night. I was delighted and honored to cover it for The Vinyl District.
As this is a headlining gig outside of a regularly scheduled headlining tour, Avatar utilized regional talent for a supporting slot on the night’s bill. Mantra of Morta hail from central Indiana, a small town literally called Farmland. Melodic metal is the name of the game with M.O.M (as they are sometimes referred to, I’ve learned). Led by vocalist Jessie Cochran, the band (Thomas Duvall, Josh Cochran, Dillon Duvall, and Justin Ashley) got the head banging started with a 45-minute set of original material.
After seeing Avatar’s (Johannes Eckerström, John Alfredsson, Henrik Sandelin, Jonas Jarlsby, and Tim Öhrström) supporting set on the first night of the Kiss of Death Tour Part 2 earlier in the week in Saratoga Springs, NY, it was good to see the band in the comfort zone of a headlining show. A forty-minute support slot is great for introducing the band to new crowds, but it is merely an amuse-bouche. To really experience Avatar, you need to roll up to a headlining show that fully showcases the band’s talent and ability to wow a crowd.
Judas Priest mark the beginning of their shows by blasting Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” into the crowd. Fans react by singing along at high volume before the kubuki curtain is pulled away and the band is revealed on stage. In similar fashion, Avatar utilize The Damned’s punk, political, yet danceable “Beware of the Clown” before the men emerge from the darkness. Obviously, the lyrics are aligned with Avatar’s circus imagery, although the song itself takes aim at Britain’s political class. Whether intentional or not, it also is a nod to the band’s willingness to genre bend (The Damned are pure 1970s punk rock) and desire to get their crowds moving. Mission accomplished.
The setlist for the Ft. Wayne show didn’t deviate from what has become the standard for Dance Devil Dance touring. No matter, as the band can balance the need to play old favorites from across their discography (“Paint Me Red,” “Let it Burn,” “Black Waltz,” etc.) with selections from Dance Devil Dance. Watching fans react to the songs as they are played, it’s clear the new material has become well-loved and is a testament to how well-received this album is. “Dance Devil Dance” gets crowds headbanging immediately, and “Valley of Disease” has audiences instructed to get a mosh pit going by the third song of the night; they enthusiastically comply. The recently released single “Make it Rain” is explosive and a great addition to the show. You get the idea.
The strategically curated list is long—18 songs—and by the time favorite closer “Hail the Apocalypse” (from 2014’s album of the same name) is unleashed at the crowd, the set is roughly two hours long. Yet, I never see crowds thinned out. Everyone is exhilarated and happy, right up until the last notes of Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” echo through the venue and the crowd spills onto the street. Ft. Wayne was no different Thursday night.
This is the end of the Dance Devil Dance era. This Ft. Wayne headlining show was the first of three sprinkled through Avatar’s tour with Ice Nine Kills and In this Moment in August and September. But after this? The men will step back from touring to work on a new album. Indeed, frontman Eckerström told the Indiana crowd that the band will be disappearing for a bit to work on new material. It’ll be a long wait.
With that in mind, I started to approach this review thinking it would be a good opportunity to examine a few of the highlights of the Dance Devil Dance album cycle. Last month, I attempted to poll other fans to see what stood out to them about this album era. While some fans echoed thoughts I present here, the overwhelming theme of the feedback was simple: they love Avatar, and they love the way seeing the band and engaging with other fans makes them feel.
That feedback underscores something I’ve long found interesting about Avatar. While Avatar’s music is amazing, what makes Avatar amazing is something I can only describe as the “Avatar alchemy;” that is, the magic this band has created through their music, humor, and relationship with their fans (I’m using alchemy and magic interchangeably here sorry). I acknowledge the corniness in that statement. However, I don’t care—it represents honest observations.
In a previous review, I started to tackle the question of what makes Avatar so special to their fans. It’s a question I still find fascinating. Reader, I’ve been cursed with the need to intellectualize human behavior—my academic background is economics and, recently, organizational behavior. Sometimes analysis works, often it’s a fool’s errand. Yet I persist.
Here, we have the additional challenge of thinking about humans within the context of music, which is of course adding mystery on top of mystery. Music lights up our reptilian brains, turns us on, and stays with us over lifetimes. Why do we like some types of music and not others? Who knows! The people who make the music? They are given godlike status, even though they are mere mortals too. Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum either—artists have entire cultures that spring up around them and Avatar is similar in that regard.
So, I will not claim that examining Avatar’s magic is easy, or even that my attempts will be successful, but it’s far more interesting than a rote recitation of events. Of course, this is just one humble woman’s perspective; your mileage may vary. There is no doubt in this world, however, that the Dance Devil Dance era represents Avatar at the top of their game.
Yes, to start, let’s touch on a few of the many highlights of the last two years. Dance Devil Dance was released in February 2023 and is Avatar’s first self-released album. However, this album era arguably began with the September 2022 release of the lyric video for banger “Valley of Disease.” There, in big letters, the peril that awaited fans was spelled out—“You are in danger, run away from me.” It’s a seductive line from a grinding song that only makes one want to get closer.
A month later, the music video for the album’s title track was released. A dark and gory affair, it features Johannes Eckerström undressing and disemboweling himself before being reborn, presumably as the devil. The video ends with him being driven off into a dark forest with his bandmates. The message is clear—the new music will be dark, and it will move you. From the note of the dark opening bell, Dance Devil Dance made us head bang, and per the band’s hopes, made us dance, and probably made us all at least a little horny. The body of work itself is of course a giant element of Avatar’s magic.
Heaven and Hell Festival in Mexico late that year marked the live debut of new music and the new stage costumes—an essential element of any Avatar era. With a crisp new look, it was off to the races, launching a series of tours that racked up an enviable amount of airline miles: bouncing between the US and Europe a few times, and fitting in Latin America and Australia, headlining the latter for the first time.
According to setlist.fm, Avatar played 112 shows in 19 countries in 2023 alone. The first half of 2024 saw the guys knocking around 17 countries, including the first headlining tour in Mexico. In the middle of it all, Avatar achieved their first Billboard chart number one, with the hip shaker “The Dirt I’m Buried In.” Let’s not forget they also have a fossil named for them now! Ophiocoma avatar forever!
I hit several of the tour dates, and they were all memorable in their unique ways, whether I was covering the band for The Vinyl District or just attending as a fan. The gig at Nashville’s Brooklyn Bowl was already one of the best shows I’d ever seen. But the surprise Lzzy Hale appearance to perform the anti-fascist, apropos-for-our time “Violence No Matter What” was the cherry on top. Silver Spring, MD was the Washington, DC area’s headlining show; the insane sellout crowd took to the new material immediately and I had to dodge crowd surfers while I took my shots in the pit.
In January, I hauled ass on the Eurostar from London and evaded a German rail strike to get to Köln just in time to line up for before early entry at Live Music Hall. This May, we had the strange experience of sharing a venue with a series of university graduation ceremonies in Indianapolis, Indiana. At all the gigs, fans shared the excitement of supporting such a talented and fun group of musicians.
I’d missed the screening of The Band Avatar Makes a Killer Album, in Madison, WI when it was held in May 2023. For the unaware, it is a documentary/horror flick about the recording of Dance Devil Dance, made with de facto sixth band member, filmmaker Johan Carlen. So, when it was announced that there would be two (January 2024) London screenings of the documentary, I was excited to make plans to attend. Not only is the film a ton of fun, but the Q&A after the screening at Everyman Kings Cross was memorable.
At one point, a woman stood up and told the band that they needed to quit with the joking and clowning around and focus on being the dark death metal musicians they are. She said she understood that American fans liked the humor, but that didn’t matter—Avatar needed to remain a dark band. The English audience, which was polite and well-behaved up to that point, started to boo the woman.
Eckerström—who generally acts as the band’s spokesman—spoke up and handled the interaction very well. He acknowledged the woman’s right to have her own opinions but asserted that humor is simply a part of who the guys are. That wasn’t going to change. To her credit, the woman took it all in stride. She was simply stating her opinion, and I respected that she was willing to take that risk.
While their song lyrics are psychologically dark, humor is a huge part of Avatar’s charm and appeal. It manifests itself in the band’s videos (“Chimp Mosh Pit” is a personal favorite) and live performances. During “Puppet Show,” Eckerström disappears from the stage, only to reappear on a balcony or on top of a bar, twisting a balloon into an animal, before treating us all to a quick trombone solo. As a former trombone player, it’s great seeing the horn get representation in metal. Late in the set, drummer Alfredsson shoots confetti into the crowd and dances with the stage gimp. Balloons get popped in people’s faces and of course, no Avatar show is complete without crowning Jonas Jarlsby king.
Social media is of course a huge avenue for showcasing the band’s goofy, often delightfully juvenile humor. Silly backstage dances, vocal warmups, pranks, Q&A’s, dick jokes, bad piano playing—it’s all there. As someone with the soul of a 12-year-old, I’ve ugly cry laughed several times. The advent of the official meet and greets means social media is now also peppered with fan photos where the guys all wear matching bathrobes. Bathrobes! Over the holidays, “Tim food” was introduced into the lexicon. “Tim food” is eternal now. Shoutout to the tour photographers the band employed this cycle, Amber Paredes and Jens De Vos, for capturing all the nerdy fun.
We all have darkness in us, and the world can be a very dark place—dark and hilarious. Disentangling the two is almost impossible and these guys get that. It’s an essential element of the Avatar magic—it’s who they are.
Finally, as I’ve mentioned in a previous review, there is a distinct vibe to the shows—the fans include everyone, and everyone looks out for each other. The band is known to straight up stop shows and leave the stage if they notice that someone in the audience requires attention. I witnessed this firsthand in Indianapolis in May. Early in the set, the entire band left the stage until a situation with an injured fan was resolved. It’s no wonder there are people who have attended literally dozens of shows and line up hours early to get close to the stage.
My belief is this: by simply being themselves—a bunch of hardworking, politically aware, nerdy vegans who crack jokes, sometimes play Dungeons and Dragons backstage, and who observe and interact with their audience—Avatar created a live environment where fans of all stripes can feel welcome and safe showing up as themselves. Maybe without even realizing it. As the saying goes, your vibe attracts your tribe. When new fans identify themselves on social media, the response from the band is simple, “Welcome home.”
In other words, Avatar’s alchemy could simply be this—the band makes loud, heavy, psychologically dark music, music that resonates with a wide swath of fans. All while demonstrating their own goofy humanity, showing its collective heart, and treating their audiences with respect. Again, a corny but very sincere assessment. In 2024, this matters.
I could keep going and overthink myself into oblivion. I probably will do that later. But the time has come to wrap this up. It’s been a fun time with Avatar and Dance Devil Dance, and we can’t wait to see what comes next for these guys. In the meantime, we’ll watch all the videos and pick apart our favorite songs and laugh at whatever 6th grade humor the band tosses our way.
A note about the venue Thursday night: Ft. Wayne’s host for the festivities was the Clyde Theatre, which was an awesome setting for an Avatar show. The venue is associated with Sweetwater Sound, which is headquartered in Ft. Wayne. I requested this date to cover for The Vinyl District because I was curious about the venue; I’m very glad I did. It is new and spacious, which meant there was room for all fans to enjoy the show the way they wanted to.
Little kids with face paint stood in the elevated areas with their parents and were able to clearly see the stage. A “VIP” section allowed people to sip beers and watch from above the crowd up a flight of stairs. Headbangers formed a circle pit with room for moshers to breathe. There’s a roped off area for ADA-accessible seating, so everyone can enjoy the show. The lights were fantastic, the sound was great, even the security staff were helpful and friendly. Covering this show was an immense pleasure.
A final, personal note: simply having the privilege of covering this talented group of men during this album cycle has been the biggest highlight of them all for me. Being allowed to photograph and write about Avatar continues to be an absolute delight. At this point in my photographic journey, I’ve covered a fair number of bands, some very famous and others not as much. But there’s nothing like the joy and challenge of covering an Avatar gig. There’s a permanent place in my heart for those collapsing microphone stands. I thank the band and their PR for continuing to let me join in on the fun—my gratitude for the access runs deep. You’ve made a shy nerd very happy. Until next time, freakshow.
Avatar continue as support for the Kiss of Death Tour Part 2, with headliners Ice Nine Kills and In This Moment through mid-September. Remaining headlining gigs are scheduled for August 15 in Kansas City, MO and September 11 in Columbus, OH.
MANTRA OF MORTA
