Photos + Review by David Molnar – The cavernous Dome at the Toyota Oakdale Theatre has hosted generations of legendary acts and on this night in May the historic Connecticut venue transformed into a twisted carnival of theatrical heavy metal as Sweden’s Avatar stormed the stage on their “Don’t Go in the Forest” tour.
Formed in 2001, the five-piece band has built a reputation for blending heavy riffs, horror imagery and circus theatrics into one unforgettable live spectacle. Frontman Johannes Eckerström commanded the crowd like a deranged ringmaster. He stalked around the stage with his white face, painted grin and wide piercing eyes as fans packed shoulder to shoulder beneath the Dome’s famous wooden circular ceiling. The set featured the pounding “Captain Goat” and “In the Airwaves” immediately unleashing waves of headbanging and crowd-surfing from the Connecticut crowd.
Avatar’s set was heavy with newer material from their 2025 album Don’t Go in the Forest and carried a darker atmosphere live with songs like “Death and Glitz”. The venue shook and the audience roared with every lyric of “Silence in the Age of Apes” from 2020’s Hunter Gatherer. The ever-popular “The Eagle Has Landed” from 2016’s Feathers & Flesh proved to be another standout with the crowd as the song combined massive guitar riffs with Avatar’s signature theatrical flair. By the time they launched into “Bloody Angel” and “Howling at the Waves,” the crowd had fully surrendered to the bizarre world Avatar creates onstage, part metal concert and part gothic theater production. The band closed their North American run on May 20 and will head to Europe beginning May 24 in Frankfurt, Germany for the next leg of the tour.
Italian symphonic death metal giants Fleshgod Apocalypse delivered perhaps the evening’s most musically overwhelming performance. Founded in 2007, the band fuses operatic arrangements and technical death metal into a wall of sound that filled every corner of the Dome. Vocalist Veronica Bordacchini was mesmerizing throughout the set, seamlessly shifting between haunting operatic passages and her commanding stage presence. Her rise within the band has become one of modern metal’s more fascinating stories, as discussed in Knotfest’s She’s With the Band with Tori Kravitz, Bordacchini originally worked as Fleshgod Apocalypse’s merch girl before eventually becoming the band’s lead female vocalist. She had a commanding performance in Wallingford, where her soaring vocals elevated the band’s symphonic arrangements into something cinematic.
Opening the evening was Texas death metal band Frozen Soul. The five-piece band formed in 2018 and whose old-school sound set the tone early. Their crushing tracks “Skinned by the Wind,” “Beat to Dust,” and “Chaos Will Reign” hit with blunt-force heaviness that contrasted perfectly with Fleshgod Apocalypse’s orchestral chaos and Avatar’s theatrical spectacle. Together, the three bands created one of the strongest metal touring packages to hit New England this year, turning the historic Toyota Oakdale Theatre into a thunderous celebration of extreme metal music, theatrical performance and pure live energy.
