Upon my arrival in Doetinchem, the Netherlands, I helped my friend Matthijs, guitarplayer in the Blackmetalband Control Human Delete,pack his stuff for the band's performance at the 'Yo Gasten!' Festival in a little place called Silvolde.
On our way to the hall where they would play, we speculated about the amount of people that would show up on location. It was the night of the European Championship football... and the Netherlands had to play against Sweden.
When all the gear was finally unloaded, it was only a matter of time before the first band had to play. But there were still not many people...
Iguana was the first band that showed her skills to the (still small) crowd.
With their mature Rock 'n Roll sound they knew to catch my eye, but the guys were a bit rusty on stage. They didn't move much and were very concentrated on their instruments. This wasn't too good for my overall impression of this beginning band, but I need to add that it isn't entirely my favourite style of music, either.
However, some melodies sounded slightly familiair. Amongs others, influences of The Dandy Warhols could be heard.
I can imagine it was hard for these young lads to get things in gear with an audience so small that couldn't even fill the average living room.
Punkrock band One Of Us All was to perform next.
With that typical popular punkrock sound, they were a nice diversion of the previous band. But after a while, it started to bore me a bit. The band just didn't have that bit of agression and rebelliousness a punkrockband should have, I think. Again, stage performance wasn't all that great. The guitarist/singer did his very best to change all that, but his efforts alone weren't enough. The rest of the band didn't co�perate and that killed the atmosphere a little.
But... they were the only ones who were able to get a pit started amongst some of the younger members in the audience. Thumbs up for that!
The last song they played was really an amazing piece of work which made me respect them a lot. They played an Alicia Keys song in the real, old - skool punkrock style! It came so natural and smoothly, I was deeply impressed by their version of the song.
By the time Control Human Delete had to play, I was a little tired. The combination of beer (a lot, seeing the fact I hadn't drank alcohol in quite some time) and the lack of audience wasn't too good for the morale, either.
But as soon as the guys played their theatrical intro in the style of Dimmu Borgir, I was wide awake. In a curtain of smoke and mystical samples, the bandmembers appeared on stage and immediately brought in some heavy artillery. Their mix of Blackmetal and computersamples is truly amazing. Although there was almost no audience left in the room (all had left to see the final stages of the footballmatch Netherlands - Sweden), I enjoyed the dark sounds of Seeking For The End Of Life and some new material, which sounded fantastic!
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The band's new drummer did very well during his first show with Control Human Delete and although not everything went as smoothly as it should have been, the individual bandmembers supported eachother in an excellent, professional way. The tiny mistakes weren't noticed by the audience.
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After a great evening, I went to the pub with some of the bandmembers and as we kept drinking beer and the occasional coke, we talked about a performance well brought!