The last time The End was playing in The Netherlands I went there without knowing any of their material, and suffering from a major Inhume-concert hangover. By now I have their last two albums, including the newly released Elementary, which shows a different direction for the band. Tonight they will show us how they’ve grown in the past few years.

Opening band was Heavy Heavy Low Low, which got a good review on our site so I was curious to their performance. This chaotic noise/mathcore band unfortunately had a lot of problems with its show. The sound wasn’t quite right, and a string of the guitarist as well as a string from the bassist snapped, with the guitarist continuing the entire set and the bass player having to run off stage. Also the vocals weren’t that impressing, so it was a bit of a poor warm-up show. Perhaps with more luck on their side I might enjoy it more.

 

Fear Before The March Of The Flames (what’s in a name?) seems to be getting popular in the U.S., but they failed miserably in convincing me of their act. Their indierock/hardcore with some math and some metal didn’t sound catchy at all, and to be honest I couldn’t even bring it up to watch their entire show. The sound wasn’t superb either, and the vocalist, who is one of the skinniest persons I’ve ever seen, has a very annoying emo voice which got worse and worse as the show progressed. Not something I will like, ever.

 

Now I was beginning to doubt if my trip here was worth the effort until The End started their show. Of course they commenced with the opening track for Elementary; ‘Dangerous’, which set the tone for an amazing show that impressed most people in the audience. A tight show with a lot of extras coming from vocalist Aaron Wolff. This guy did his screams and singing combined with percussion on a big floor tom, handling some keyboards and an extra microphone with effects on it, and he also used a megaphone to do some aggressive talking. All this together with some amazing riffs and pounding drums provided a highly entertaining show. The fact that I’m not a huge fan of mister Wolff’s emo vocals could be taken for granted with this. Luckily some old songs also passed by, so there was a good balance between aggressive and the more melodic songs. I seriously think it wouldn’t be weird to see this band opening for Tool in a couple of years. The End convinced me, keep an eye out for them!