On Friday October 27^th Sledgehammer Messiah and Buzzin Hornet met each other in Arnhem. This night three bands would try to destroy a venue called Willemeen. And believe us when we say it does not take much to achieve this goal. The challenge was between the following bands in order of playing: Intero, Demia (formerly known as Cancelled aka CND) and the headliner of this evening was Dagoba from France.

The first band this evening was Intero from Nijmegen (NL). The band radiates pure metal with suffocation shirts and long hair. But the sound proved otherwise. The guys play some kind of simplified combination of hardcore with a little bit of thrash metal. And imagine this with a horrible singer. The guy didn’t manage to hit one note correctly this night and that completely f*cked up their show. While the drummer wasn’t that tight in the beginning of the show other band members were losing their grip during the end. The music of this band is reasonable for what they are trying to play but it just isn’t appealing to any of us and due to the awful sound in the venue they did not even get close to a descent set. Back to the rehearsal room and better luck next time guys! (Buzzin Hornet)

 

Second band of the night carries the name Demia. For many people this does not sound familiar but when I say their previous name is Cancelled or CND many Dutch readers will recognize these guys (and in Germany the Rock am Ring visitors will think: Woops, so there was actually a band playing at 3PM instead of a cancelled act like the program stated…). For me it was the second time I have seen these guys play with their new name. And I have to say they are really experienced and they know to get the crowd going. Too bad the sound was bad again but this is a result of the system this venue uses. The set these guys were playing was pretty good. With a crazy bass player and two bad ass guitarists the band managed to get the crowd going. And most important, the front man of this band has all the qualities you need to lead a band throughout the gig. Overall Demia presents the audience with a diverse set filled with impressive and quality songs. It is great to see an Dutch band perform like this even though almost every band in the Netherlands can learn something from a band like Dagoba. I am really looking forward to their new album (recorded with Logan Mader from Machine Head) but the band is still looking for a label. (Buzzin Hornet)

Tonight Dagoba proved to be a band which you have to keep your eye on. These young French guys already have a great sound of their own, which I would almost call nu-death metal because it’s so aggressive but at the same time pretty accessible. Yeah I know, the term nu-death metal sounds awful, but it’s meant in a positive way actually! The songs are full with strong double bass rhythms, but often the vocals are somewhere between singing and screaming. Industrial influences like in the opening song of the set, ‘Die Tomorrow’, make this band sound even stronger. Very convincingly the guys let us hear about every song from their second CD What Hell is About and really every song of this CD made me severely damage my neck; perfect! On the other hand a song from their first album, like ‘Something Stronger’, is definitely less impressive and could have been left out of the set; that will probably happen when they’ve written some more material. Especially on the song ‘Cancer’ Shawter let us hear that he’s also capable of singing beautiful clean. On ‘It’s All About Time’  the clean guest vocals of Vortex of Dimmu Borgir are on tape, which looks a bit odd, but the unusual combination of clean vocals over a fast blast beat stunned me! This is also where you can notice in particular how an awesome drummer Franky is; with his style and powerful, tight drumming he can be compared with Roy Mayorga of Stone Sour! Dagoba really put out a fantastic effort this night and we also got to see some nice windmills; keep up that spirit guys! (Sledgehammer Messiah)

 

You can expect an interview and CD review online soon, so stay tuned!