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author SBTS date 02/03/24 venue KB Hallen, Copenhagen, DEN

Kaizers Orchestra is back after 10 years in hibernation. And it wasn’t without expectations that I arrived at a completely sold out KB Hallen; back in 2002 I watched the Norwegian band for the first time on the iconic Roskilde Festival’s White Stage, where I was captivated by their unique, Balkan-influenced sound, with dusty guitars, a pump organ, and of course oil barrels providing texture for their music. But years have passed - many years. So I was excited to have a reunion of sorts with a band who meant a lot to me back in the day, but whom I’ve more or less forgotten about in my personal music catalog today.

Kaizers Orchestra

Pump organ player Helge Risa slowly enters the stage wearing a gas mask and a black suit, sits down behind his instrument, and starts slowly to hit the first notes for “Ompa til du dør” off its namesake 2001 album. The crowd is instantly on fire! The rest of the band then takes the stage like an energy discharge, with the charismatic lead singer Janove Ottesen in front. This seems set to become a magical evening, with the entire hall singing along from the first second of the show — even the security guard standing next to me. Indeed, the audience is going all in from the very beginning, and the tempo is turned up a notch when “Bøn fra helvete” from that same record is kick-started to the tune of oil barrels getting smashed by baseball bats, and crowbars beating up car rims. And after the subsequent “KGB” from the group’s 2005 offering “Maestro” has followed, the expectations for the rest of the evening are sky high.

But as “Prosessen”, “Aldri vodka, Violeta” and “Støv og sand” are aired, the beer queues at the bars grow larger and larger, people start engaging in chatter, and for some reason the overall mood inside the venue reaches a low. “I ett med verden” is an attempt to restore the concert to its initial track with a classic rock’n’roll vibe, but the band do not fully succeed with their mission. To be clear: Kaizers Orchestra themselves are brimming with enthusiasm — the crowd, not as much… yet.

When pump organ is unleashed in the beginning of “Veterans klage”, taken from 2003’s “Evig pint”, its dark and heavy atmosphere seems to capture the imagination of the audience again, causing people to headbang in collective unison. And although “Bak et halleluja” takes us from one extreme to the other, no one is standing still. Different dance moves are seen all over the venue as people look like they’re experiencing their second, or even third youth, and wide grins are seen across the board. The following songs serve as a time machine back to the old days, allowing Kaizers Orchestra to triumph in all their oil barrel-hammering glory.

Personal highlights for me arrive with “Kontroll på kontinentet” and “170” — two very different songs in terms of the amount of energy dispensed, but both of which nonetheless induce everyone to loudly sing along and express their having missed Kaizers Orchestra on the music scene sorely. Hallelujah! We thus witness an extraordinary chapter of Norwegian music history tonight, albeit one I feel like I’ve already read before with more uniqueness packed into it the first time.

Setlist:

• 1. Ompa til du dør
• 2. Bøn fra helvete
• 3. KGB
• 4. Prosessen
• 5. Aldri vodka, Violeta
• 6. Støv og sand
• 7. I ett med verden
• 8. Veterans klage
• 9. Bak et halleluja
• 10. Resistansen
• 11. Dr. Mowinckel
• 12. Min kvite russer
• 13. Dine gamle dager er nå
• 14. En for orgelet, en for meg
• 15. Kontroll på kontinentet
• 16. Hjerteknuser

— Encore —

• 17. Begravelsespolka
• 18. Maestro
• 19. 170
• 20. Die Polizei