Good afternoon everybody, and be prepared to enjoy this live view of some bands that are definitely GREAT. First of all, Napalm Lex and I went to the 013 for an interview with Byron Stroud, which you can read at the interview section. My duty was to fix a live view for the site. Zimmer's Hole: The dark tones of The Hole Is The Law filled the hall while Byron and Jed made their entrance. Steve Wheeler took the drums and finally the demon himself entered the stage. After completing The Hole Is The Law, they continued their spectaculair set. Chris Valagao was dressed up like a demon with some kind of leather thing with no back, so the frontside was covered, but NOT the backside including his arse. HILARIOUS!!!! After a couple of songs they played Evil Robots, an attack on Kiss and Metallica for being enormous sellouts. On this marvelous set Dead To The Dodgers of Soap couldn't be missed out, and it amazed me that they played so much material from both albums, however the main part was from Legion Of Flames. Nice interruption was This is Metal from the Bound By Fire album and Fully Packed, with Valagao imitating a chicken. The live performance was absolute great because of the funny elements they used. ( A giant dildo spurting booze or a carcass of a woman, being penetrated by the same dildo) The insane performance of Chris was indeed noteworthy. Ofcourse Re-Anaconda was played aswell This Flight Tonight. Then an oldy came by ( Waste Of Towels, which handles about Chris being drunk and pissing the floor) After awhile Chris started to fill glasses with booze that came out of that huge dildo and handed them out in the audience. After some explaining ( When I SAY DRINK, DRINK MOTHERFUCKERS) they started That's How Drunks Drink. Funny fact is that the same dildo was used when fucking the carcass with White Trash Momma. The time really flew and it seemed not long when Chris announced the last song, The Death Of The Resurrection Of The Death Of Metal. Very impressing COOL set! The Devin Townsend Band: How energic Zimmer's Hole was, how dull and sleeping The Devin Townsend band was. Now I must correct myself, it was dull, but GENIOUS! I have totally lost myself with these long epic songs with that hysterical voice of Devin. With classics like Away, Ocean Machine, Storm and Traveler and oldies from Therapy and Phycist Devin Townsend really impressed me. After awhile Devin started a solo on the guitar, which lasted for almost 15 minutes. It's not so hard to see where Devin learned to play like this, as he was the second guitarist supporting Steve Vai!!! I cannot remember much of the set, because the songs where almost mixed together. Remarkably was the line up of the Devin Townsend band, because they didn't use the normal Strapping Young Lad line up containing Gene Hoglan on Drums, Jed Simons on Guitar and Byron Stroud on Bass. No, it was a whole new line up with names that didn't sound familiar to me. After almost an hour of inspirating relaxing music I had to change my view, as I first thought it boring, but after awhile Devin just amazed me with his guitar play and boring became genious. Noteworthy was the Final song called Bad Devil ( and we happened to have a devil on tour, Devin announced, and YES Chris Valagao, from Zimmer's Hole entered the stage, trying to penetrate Devin with the dildo, and being the clown on the set, this gave the set a more hilarious tone!!) Strapping Young Lad: SYL have recently brought out their new Self Titled album and this was the tour to promote the album, but remarkably they played more classics than they played new material, which doesn't matter because ALL of their material is brutal! The set was filled with brutal songs like SYL, Home Nucleonics ( The Beat Starts Here :)), Consequence ( the opener and a new song), Owh My Fucking God ( SIR!, GET DOWN THERE, AND SUCK MY BODIES....... COCK!!!!!!!!) and from the new album they played The Rape Song, Relentless, Devour and Aftermath. Strapping Young Lad contains one of the most brutal line ups ever produced, with Gene Hoglan on drums, Jed and Byron doing guitars and bass and Devin at vocals and guitars, they have the strongest of metalmusicians in one band. The hour and a half the band filled their set really flew and everybody was disappointed when they announced their final song Detox. The musicians left the stage, but not for long, as they returned for a brilliant encore. A compilation of 3 songs called Velvet Kevorkian, Force Fed ( from SYL) and All Hail The New Flesh. It was just 1 and a half hour of pure fucking metal and I definetly liked it, for this was certainly the best gig of the year for me, although I'm affraid Testament will fill this spot. But be sure, Testament will have a hard job overpowering these 4 ( or must I say 5, as SYl uses a sampler) metalgods Review by Mat-Core