Strapping Young Lad - Starring Jabba the Hut
At a warm sunny day, the twelfth of June and Strapping Young Lad performed at De Melkweg in Amsterdam. While the sweat was already dripping over my entire body an extraordinary evening was awaiting me.
After having some troubles with the train I finally arrived at the venue to see the last two songs of Maroon. Their metalcore didn’t sound very refreshing to me but at least they didn’t had the looks of a hip metalcore band as many young bands do these days. The voice of the singer reminded me a lot of the singer of Hatesphere and he turned out to be a strange guy; at the last song he started stripping which not everybody could enjoy but I sure had some good laughs.
When Strapping Young Lad started to play I was at the balcony so I had a good overview of the musicians. Gene Hoglan proved that he is at the top of the drummers in the scene. He always makes me think of Jabba the Hut and combined with his exceptional drumming skills it is fantastic to see this man performing live. I went downstairs to get more into the insulting vibe spread by Mister Townsend, but he was actually quite soft towards the audience this evening; the traditional insults that díd pass by were off course received with lots of cheers by the audience. Devin and co. had the audience totally in their pocket which wasn’t strange because they simply played a fantastic set with an incredible sound. Lots of people sung along with a new song like ‘You Suck’ and songs like ‘Relentless’ and ‘Home Nucleonics’ simply ripped the place up. The songs of Devin always seem to have something by which it totally gets you in its grip, like ‘All Hail the New Flesh’ was almost hypnotic. It was absolutely a fantastic show.