Avatar - Exhibition White City - 14th February 2026
- 21 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Roll up! Sweden's best metal circus is in town! Avatar, known for their blend of theatrics and heavy riffs, played a spectacular show at Exhibition White City, London...for the most part. Unfortunately, due to the venue becoming unsafe, the band had to abandon their set halfway through as "the whole stage became electrified", leaving two crew members hurt. More on that later though, here is what we saw up until then...
The crowd started filling up in their drones, clown paint to match singer Johannes everywhere you looked, which gave openers Witch Club Satan a pretty sizeable crowd to perform to. The Norwegian feminist trio took to the stage in knitted ram headwear and incense in hand, before kicking into their black metal sound. It took a bit for the crowd to warm up to them, but as the band expressed their opinions on certain geopolitical leaders, this won the crowd over with a resounding "hell yeah!" An extremely evocative set, bringing Norwegian black metal out of the dark ages and stereotypes, and someone who I personally can't wait to see more of.
Next up were Alien Weaponry, this kiwi trio paid homage to their Māori roots by starting their set with the Haka, something that always gives me chills, as well as performing in their native language. A complete 180 from the previous opener, Alien Weaponry gave the crowd a kick ass set of thrash-influenced nu-metal. Tonight really is a night of eclecticism, especially if you're someone who needs their mind open to something new and different.
We finally come to tonight's headliner, Avatar. Setting the scene with the PA quietly projecting music that sounds like that of 40's wartime radio, before the stage enviably turns dark. The band's drum kit splits in two and is pulled to each side of the stage as frontman Johannes Eckerström stands cloaked with a lantern in hand. As he makes his way towards the front, the rest of the band joins him, also cloaked, as they start the set with 'Captain Goat'.
'Silence in the Age of Apes' and 'The Eagle Has Landed' rolled into one of the loudest crowd moments I’ve heard in years, the room chanting “everything is going to be okay”, arms swaying left to right in unison.
That’s the magic of Avatar. One second, Johannes unleashes a guttural, bone-shaking scream; the next, you’re swept up in a ridiculously catchy, almost carnivalesque oom-pa-pa riff that lodges itself in your brain for days. It’s chaos and melody, brutality and bounce that just hooks you right in.
'In The Airwaves' gave fans a taste of the new material from their latest record, 'Don't Go In The Forest', while 'Bloody Angel' hit a spot with long-time fans. Personal highlights for me were 'Death and Glitz' and the extremely catchy 'The Dirt I'm Buried In', where previously, Johannes joked about the audience getting 'dirty' in another way.
So what happened? Well unfortunately, after 'Legend of the King', it appeared the band were having technical problems and made an abrupt exit. After 15 minutes, the crowd were ushered out, stating it was no longer safe to continue. The band later posted on social media, "The whole stage became electrified. It burnt some of our equipment and also shocked – severely shocked – two guys in our crew,
"We have deemed this venue not safe to perform in any longer. We could get hurt, we we're simply lucky. The crew guys are fine now, so also lucky. But this is not a safe place to be for you or for us, so how about a rain cheque?
"We want to figure out what we can do to come back as soon as we can. Both you and us deserve that very much.
"Thank you for an amazing hour-plus at least, it was supposed to be a bit longer. You were amazing, we were pretty amazing too. Let's find an amazing place to finish this."
Luckily, the band made it to their next stop in Manchester the following night and were able to perform in full.
Despite the short set, Avatar are absolutely one of the most interesting bands in the scene at the moment and absolutely someone everyone should have on their bucket list.
