Avatar Turns The National Into a Twisted Metal Carnival in Richmond
Some concerts feel polished. Carefully assembled and predictable in the way big arena productions sometimes become predictable, where every lighting cue lands with corporate precision and every crowd interaction feels timed against a click track somewhere backstage.
Then there’s Avatar.
Avatar shows don’t really unfold so much as spiral outward like a haunted circus wagon losing a wheel on I-95. That’s part of the charm. Hell, maybe the whole charm.
May 12 at The National (in Richmond, Virginia) felt less like attending a metal concert and more like wandering into some beautifully deranged cabaret where death metal, vaudeville theater, horror-film visuals, and arena-rock hooks all got stitched together with black eyeliner and gallons of sweat.
And somehow, it works. Every single time.
Even before doors opened, Richmond’s metal crowd was buzzing outside the venue. Battle jackets everywhere. Corpse paint. People arguing over favorite Avatar albums while standing in line beside fans wearing Frozen Soul hoodies and Fleshgod Apocalypse shirts. It had that festival atmosphere packed into a theater footprint. Different corners of heavy music all colliding for one weird, loud evening.
Frozen Soul opened the night with the subtlety of a concrete block through a windshield. Their old-school death metal sound hit hard immediately. Thick metal guitar tones, lumbering grooves, vocals that sounded dragged from the bottom of a muddy lake somewhere in northern Texas. Which, honestly, fits the band perfectly.
What made Frozen Soul stand out wasn’t speed. Plenty of bands can play fast. It was the weight behind everything. The riffs moved slowly enough to feel cruel. Deliberately cruel.
The pit reacted instantly too. No warmup period. No polite head nodding. Within two songs, bodies were already colliding near center floor while security guards exchanged those familiar “long night ahead” glances.
And yet the room stayed weirdly friendly. That’s the funny thing about metal crowds sometimes. Absolute chaos in the pit, then somebody immediately helping another person find a lost phone three seconds later. Human contradiction at concert volume.
Frozen Soul’s set felt like a blizzard rolling through Richmond in mid-May. Oppressive, cold, satisfying.
Watch the official music video for “Crypt of Ice” by Frozen Soul on YouTube:
The follow up band, the Italian metal group Fleshgod Apocalypse, went full Opera-House nightmare. If Frozen Soul felt primal, Fleshgod Apocalypse felt cinematic.
Watching the road crew set up a piano and orchestral backing arrangements after the caveman stomp of Frozen Soul created this sharp tonal shift, but it worked beautifully. Suddenly the room transformed from underground death metal club into gothic opera horror theater. And Fleshgod Apocalypse absolutely leaned into that atmosphere.
The band sounded enormous inside The National. Drum beats ricocheted around the room while symphonic layers floated above the chaos like smoke curling along cathedral ceilings. It could’ve become muddy fast, especially in a packed theater, but the sound mix held together remarkably well.
Their stage presence carried this strange elegance too. Extreme metal usually operates with brute force, but Fleshgod approached it more like conducting a violent orchestra. Precision mattered. Timing mattered. Every stop-and-start passage landed clean.
At one point during their set, I looked around the balcony and noticed people standing completely frozen, almost studying the performance instead of reacting physically. That doesn’t happen often during opening bands. Usually audiences drift toward bars or merch lines. Not here, the room was locked in.
Then the Circus arrived.
There’s always a moment before Avatar takes the stage where anticipation shifts into something else entirely. Not tension exactly. More like collective curiosity. Even people who’ve seen them before seem unsure what kind of madness they’re about to witness. Then the lights dropped.
The eerie intro rolled through the theater, and suddenly Johannes Eckerström and the band appeared under the stagelights looking like a ringmaster and his cronies who’ve escaped from a fever dream sometime around 1890.
And Richmond lost its mind.
“Captain Goat” exploded out of the gate with immediate force. The crowd surged forward, fists flying into the air while Avatar’s twin-guitar attack filled every inch of the venue. Right away, the band established the balance they’ve perfected over the years: absurd theatricality paired with genuinely crushing metal.
Watch the official music video for “Captain Goat” by Avatar on YouTube:
Because beneath all the costumes and stage antics, Avatar can flat-out play.
“Silence in the Age of Apes” sounded especially huge live, its groove bouncing across the packed floor while Eckerström stomped around the stage with exaggerated movements that somehow felt both ridiculous and magnetic. He doesn’t merely front the band. He inhabits the songs like characters in a play.
That’s a hard thing to pull off without drifting into self-parody, but Avatar walks that tightrope better than almost anybody in modern metal. Somewhere between Broadway and a bar fight.
“The Eagle Has Landed” turned into one of the night’s biggest singalong moments early in the set. The crowd practically shouted the chorus back at the band while red and white lights flashed across the theater like warning sirens.
Then came “In The Airwaves” and “Bloody Angel,” which pushed the energy even higher.
What stood out most Tuesday night was how sharp the band sounded collectively. Guitarists Jonas Jarlsby and Tim Öhrström traded riffs and harmonies with surgical precision, while drummer John Alfredsson played like someone trying to physically pummel gravity itself. Bassist Henrik Sandelin held down the bottom while also singing backing vocals.
And Eckerström? Completely captivating.
One second he was grinning maniacally at the front row. The next, he was crouched low at center stage delivering lines with unsettling intensity. It shouldn’t work. A singer dressed like a gothic circus host probably shouldn’t command a metal crowd this effectively.
But there he was, controlling the room like a conductor pulling on invisible strings.
“Death and Glitz” especially captured Avatar’s whole identity in one song. The title alone feels like a mission statement. Heavy music wrapped in theatrical weirdness. Glitter smeared across a horror movie.
Richmond ate it up.
Midway through the set, Avatar shifted gears slightly with “A Secret Door” and “The Dirt I’m Buried In,” bringing a more emotional weight into the performance without losing momentum.
Watch the official music video for “The Dirt I’m Buried In” by Avatar on YouTube:
That’s one thing the band has improved dramatically over the years. Their pacing.
Older Avatar sets sometimes felt relentless to the point of exhaustion. Now they understand space better. They let songs breathe. They allow atmosphere to settle before detonating the next big moment.
“Torn Apart” carried that emotional undercurrent even further. Around me, fans screamed lyrics with the kind of intensity that suggests these songs genuinely traveled with them through difficult years and you could feel it.
Not every metal crowd opens itself emotionally. Some scenes hide behind toughness. Avatar fans don’t seem interested in that game.
And maybe that openness fits the band’s theatrical side. Their music already operates at heightened emotional volume anyway.
By the time “Let It Burn” and “Tonight We Must Be Warriors” arrived late in the main set, the entire floor at The National had transformed into one giant moving organism. Hair flying. Bodies jumping. Beer sloshing onto sneakers. The usual glorious mess.
Then the encore sealed it.
“Don’t Go in the Forest” brought eerie tension back into the room before Avatar launched into “Smells Like a Freakshow,” which was like a carnival riot breaking loose downtown, while everybody sang along and everybody moved.
And finally, “Hail the Apocalypse.”
That chorus hit like a collapsing building. The crowd screamed every word while the band hammered through the finale with exhausting intensity. Confetti cannons probably would’ve felt excessive at most metal shows. Here, weirdly, they fit completely. Ending the night like total maniacs.
As the house lights finally came up, sweaty fans shuffled toward Broad Street grinning like survivors of some elaborate shared hallucination.
Which honestly sums up an Avatar concert pretty well.
Part metal show. Part theater production. Part traveling nightmare circus held together by riffs, charisma, and the understanding that heavy music doesn’t always need to look too serious to hit hard.
Avatar Setlist:
1. Captain Goat
2. Silence in the Age of Apes
3. The Eagle Has Landed
4. In The Airwaves
5. Bloody Angel
6. Death and Glitz
7. A Secret Door
8. The Dirt I’m Buried In
9. Colossus
10. Torn Apart
11. Howling at the Waves
12. Legend of the King
13. Let It Burn
14. Tonight We Must Be Warriors
Encore
15. Don’t Go in the Forest
16. Smells Like a Freakshow
17. Hail the Apocalypse
Here are some photos of Avatar headlining The National on May 12, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Michael Sprouse/ Odd Rocker Photography.
Here are some photos of Fleshgod Apocalypse opening Avatar at The National on May 12, 2026. All pictures copyright and courtesy of Michael Sprouse/ Odd Rocker Photography.
