My fourth concert on this tour: Vienna! Known as a great place for Kaizers concerts, with a very loud and enthusiastic audience and sweaty, extravagant shows. This time as well? Hmm, tja …

Well, the part about the loud and enthusiastic audience was just as expected. Just like the other concerts, Arena had just the right size – it wasn’t quite sold out, but it filled up well and seemed crowded. The audience was much louder than you would have expected from the amount of people, and especially in the end, there was an incredible amount of cheering and applause. It doesn’t happen everywhere that everyone continues clapping and shouting for a second encore even ten minutes after the concert is over! We didn’t get another encore though, sadly, even though it would have made sense considering the atmosphere of the concert.

In front of the stage, there was a group of Norwegian girls that you could notice even before the concert started – at that time, they were screaming at the end of every song, expecting the concert to start, and later on during the concert, they were demanding Hjerteknuser all the time. And okay, in addition to that, they were of course also singing along loudly and having great fun. =;-) But I think that this is one of the reasons why this concert didn’t really catch on for me. In a way, I had the feeling that Kaizers directed the whole concert a lot towards this group of Norwegians – a few times, the Jackal asked the audience to sing along at places where someone who doesn’t know Norwegian just cannot sing along. And then, for the first time on the tour, they actually played Hjerteknuser …?! But okay, that one was “officially” on the set list, so they didn’t spontaneously decide to play it after the girls asked for it (which I had expected at first).

I was at the concert with a friend who saw her first Kaizers concert – maybe that made me experience the concert differently as well. I guess that if I had been there alone, I might have loved the setlist, because they had changed it up again a whole lot! And all fans I talked to after the concert actually loved the show and the setlist. I’m just not sure what “Ola Audience”, thus the common concert goer and not hardcore fan, thought about the show … My friend who didn’t know Kaizers at all before asked me in the middle of the concert if they wouldn’t usually play more up-tempo songs, and don’t they hit the oil barrels as well?! And I totally agreed – the first seven songs were exclusively Violeta songs, and those don’t really fit the “speed polka reputation” that Kaizers have in Europe (including Delikatessen, Djevelens orkester, or Bøn fra helvete would really have made a difference there). After that, they played Ompa til du dør and Di grind as “old hits”, before the Jackal explained that they had played a lot of the old songs up to now, and so it was time for a new one now, namely Forloveren. Uh … I think that was the moment when I was totally confused by the concert. =;-)

That might sound very negative now, but that wouldn’t do the concert justice. It was entertaining, the audience enjoyed it, it just felt really strange in a way … And I can’t really put my finger on why. There were hardly any “typical” announcements in between the songs, and I hardly took notes at all. The Jackal was very self-confident, called Kaizers “the biggest rock band in Norway” that has also written “the biggest hit” (Hjerteknuser, of course), so Dieter Meyers was suddenly down to the second best song ever written. Later on, he told us that he cannot only sing, but also play the guitar and piano and … well, everything! At least that’s what his mother says. And he invited us all into his garden, to have a barbecue or something.

Since we were in a German-speaking country, En for orgelet was translated into German again – and after a first try with “Eins für das Orgel”, he even managed the correct version. =;-) And once again, we were asked very politely: “Singen Sie bitte!”

What I found really weird was the placement of Kvite russer, in the middle of the set – I’m sure that works perfectly fine when there are up-tempo songs before and after it and they have to “calm down” the audience a bit. But after Forloveren? Naah, I don’t know. But then, most of the band actually stayed on stage during the song. Hellraizer took a seat on the barrel, Killmaster lit up a cigarette.

Omen’s solo part consisted of taking notes again. Nothing new there – but I was very amused when he was drinking water at some point in time. Pouring a sip at a time into the bottle cap and drinking from the cap. *lol*

Towards the end of the concert, it seemed to me that they got into the flow better and better; the setlist turned more “typical” as well and was more varied. At the same time, though, I had the feeling that the Jackal had problems with his voice and that the concentration was down a bit for everyone. Seemed like they almost messed up Svarte katter. But it all worked just fine in the end of course, and after the Jackal had to work very very very hard during Dr. Mowinckel because his oil barrel kept sliding and moving, that didn’t happen anymore during Dieter Meyers or Maestro.

So all in all, I thought this was a rather mixed concert. But definitely different from the ones before, and variation is always great. =;-)

The setlist:

• Aldri vodka, Violeta
• Det polaroide liv
• Tusen dråper regn
• Din kjole lukter bensin, mor
• En for orgelet, en for meg
• Siste dans
• I ett med verden
• Ompa til du dør
• Di grind
• Forloveren
• Min kvite russer
• Dr. Mowinckel
• Philemon Arthur & the Dung
• Støv og sand
• Hjerteknuser
• Svarte katter & flosshatter
• Dieter Meyers Inst.
• Maestro
  ———–
• KGB
• Begravelsespolka