Ondfødt – Live in Hamburg

This is not a review. Don’t expect objectivity. Don’t expect setlists.


This is just a vessel—something to hold the photos, the chaos, and the wild little scream that was last Thursday.

 

It was a gig.

I made it weird.

You’re welcome.

I didn’t know Ondfødt until this year.

They came in through the side door, like so many bands do these days—via Stormbringer promo spam.

Finnish. Black Metal. Done. Say no more.

 

Their album Dimsvall didn’t hit me like a hammer. It made me do the work. Took me several spins to fully appreciate it. If you want to hear what I actually said with my reviewer brain on, the full review is here.

 

But my involvement didn’t end there. Nope. Because Dimsvall ended up in the Eisenwald merch shoot I did this summer. Which meant LPs, CDs, MCs and the whole unholy package were living in my kitchen for weeks.

 

And then came the reel incident.

"Can you cut something real quick? Just a 30-second teaser. New single."

 

I said yes, because I’m a people pleaser with poor boundaries.

No plan. No laptop. No clue.

Six hours later: one mediocre, glitchy reel.

It got posted. It exists. It bears my shame.

 

Do I like it? Absolutely not.

Do they care? Also absolutely not.

This is a deeply one-sided relationship.

 

But emotionally? I had now committed.

I had spent time. Focus. Frustration. My entire editing brain.

By the time the Hamburg show was announced, I didn’t even think.

 

Photo pass? Requested.

Date? Marked.

At this point I’d already lived with their album longer than most of my houseplants.

Only later did I realise: It’s a Thursday. Chris can’t come. The kids have school.


If I wanted to go, I’d have to go alone.

Now—laugh all you want. But this was my first solo anything. 
No friends. No husband. No backup.

Just me, my camera, and a deeply unhealthy level of social anxiety.

Driving to Hamburg? Awful. Always is.


Venue? Billstedt. Which I associate mostly with crime reports and regret.


Still, I found parking. Swore 300 times. Survived. Progress.

No queue outside. No sea of hoodies. Just—silence.

I rounded a corner—and bam. First social panic trigger.

Before I even found the bloody entrance, I ran into a familiar face.

A girl I’ve known from Instagram for years.

The kind of person with the aesthetic I wish I could pull off—

but, well. Shit legs. Wrong era. Bit too old. So, no.

 

I knew she’d be there.

What I didn’t expect was to run into her immediately—while I was still trying to figure out how to get inside.

My brain wasn’t ready for social interaction. Still buffering. Still focused on logistics.

 

And yet there we were:

Squealing. Hugging. Awkward laughing.

That whole thing that happens when two women who've only ever DM’d suddenly materialise in the same time zone.

 

I was entirely focused on her. Only side-eyed the guy next to her.

He looked vaguely familiar.

My brain flagged him as: "Instagram friend’s friend. Seen him in a Story once. Probably."

So—without thinking, I did what decades of social training drilled into me:

I offered him my hand.

 

Like the absolute relic I am.

Like a mum at a class reunion.

Like an aunt meeting her niece’s new boyfriend for the first time.

Like a fucking handshake NPC.

 

He looked slightly startled, but went with it. Said his name.

I nodded, didn’t hear it. Still stuck in the social boot-up screen.

 

And then I wandered off, quite pleased with myself for "handling" the situation.

 

Roughly ten steps later, it hit me like a blunt object:

That was the fucking drummer.

From Ondfødt.

 

Whose face I had stared at for six hours straight while cutting that goddamn reel.

I had zoomed in on his face more times than I’ve zoomed in on my own.

 

And now I’d introduced myself like I was his aunt Gerlinde from Bremen who brought the potato salad.

Lovely.

I sat outside. Rattled. Anxious. Where the hell was everyone?

Eventually, people trickled in. Not many. Maybe 50? Felt very underground. In the best way.

Venue was in a literal basement. Pillars. Pipes. Stickers.


No guest list. At all. Like, just—no list.
But apparently I knew the right magic word, because I got in anyway.

Bar recon: no card machine. No cash on me.

Panic.

Turns out Chris usually handles cash. And beer-fetching.
This time, no husband. Just me.

I finally asked the bartender if they took card.
He laughed. Saw my panic. Then—saint that he is—slid me a €20 bill.
Wrote down his email.

"Just PayPal me later."

Jakob. You legend. You life-saving, cash-holding, soul-healing legend.

Blodmärkt kicked things off. Never heard of them.

Turns out they’re the blackened troll metal I never knew I needed.

Finntroll vibes. Danceable filth. Gritty joy.

 

And the frontman? He didn’t stay on stage.

Nope—he jumped straight down onto the floor, corpsepaint goblin in full effect.

One second he was up there, the next he was right in front of me.

Like—thirty centimetres. Kicking his feet up in some kind of deranged polka.

 

And then he just stopped.

Stood there.

Lifted the mic.

Growled.

 

And I didn’t just hear it through the speakers.

I heard it straight from him. Directly.

 

Something in me clicked right then.

Like—yep, this. This is why I come to gigs like this.

 

My brain went:

“Excuse me, SIR.”

And I was grinning like an idiot, ferally happy to be growled at in person.

 

My camera loved them. Too much.

Took 300 photos. Would do it again. Would go see them again.

Keep going, guys.

Äera was up next.

A band I really like listening to. Hadn’t heard them live before.

It was—okay. Not as atmospheric as I’d hoped.

 

Problem was also shooting them. They gave me way less to work with, and I got frustrated.

The drummer was the exception—I caught a happy smile from him.

The rest was just three dudes standing and sweating. With chandeliers in front.

 

Still listening to them on my headphones though.

Honestly. Good stuff. I like them a lot.

And then—finally—Ondfødt.

Full corpsepaint. Leather vests. Nothing underneath.
Just skin and sweat and that distinct Finnish flavour of stoic male nudity.

 

They sounded great. Just like the record.

And like the record, it didn’t blow your face off.
It crept in. Slow. Methodical. No frills. No flames. Just—black metal.
Solid. Steady. Precise.

People loved it.

 

I hyper-fixated on one weird thing:

The singer’s guitar was exactly the same colour as the vinyl.

That made me deeply happy. Don’t ask.

Ondfødt wrapped up, and the room started to thin out. Adrenaline crash incoming.

 

That’s when I realised—I hadn’t actually been on my own for half the night. After Äera started, I ended up next to the Instagram acquaintance I’d bumped into at the entrance earlier.

 

I drove home grinning.

Exhausted. Wired. Possibly unsafe to operate a vehicle.

 

I had stepped out of my comfort zone. Hard.

Didn’t have Chris. Didn’t have backup. Just had myself—and apparently that was enough.

 

Basement black metal, troll polkas, accidental emotional support goths, a bartender with PayPal, and me traumatising the drummer with a handshake.

 

10/10 Thursday night. Would suffer again.