The first band was supposed to be Tephra from Germany, but they had cancelled. I couldn’t make out what the vocalist said that this band we were about to see was called, all I know is that I liked it. Fast paced thrash-death metal that blasted and pounded like it should. And best of all, no riffs that are older than my mother. Nice original blasting noise with a powerful throat and a lot of fast blasting. For their originality I can forgive the minor tightness errors made in this show. The vocalist was pretty funny to see as well, he announced song titles that are as old as Carcass and Death titles and he stood on stage like a true redneck. I love those people.

 

So after that it was time for World Escape to keep the crowd awake, which they did for most of the people in there, except for me and the posse I was hanging with. Uninteresting rhythmical metal that had a lot of breaks in it that couldn’t even make me look up, besides looking irritated. They did have a pretty good bass player with an even cooler afro haircut but his volume was to low so I could barely hear what he was doing. Anyway, I was glad when it was over.

 

Now what to say about a band like Ephel Duath. Words that come to mind vary from brilliant and unique, to chaos and insanity. Jaw-dropping to say the least. Every song played consists of noisy, hard hitting math-metal parts accompanied by just the right screams, only to return to incoherent fusion-jazz parts that are mainly short solo’s by all the instruments. The band is currently out of a clean vocalist, but that didn’t bother me at all. It gave me a better opportunity to check out what the hell they all were playing.

Now I have no idea how the hell they’re able to memorise their parts while being stoned, because there are virtually no parts that are played more than two times in a logical order. The drummer (who I believe is just a touring drummer at the moment) had papers with the songs written out on them, which seemed quite necessary to me. They all wore clicktracks as well I believe, because they managed to burst into songs without warning.

The vocalist was a cool dude, he jumped into the audience several times, and I moshed with him as well. I suspect that there’s a bite mark of me in his skull. When he screamed he had a weird slapping movement with his hand, quite interesting.

All in all it was a killer show, but only for the really open minded. I hope to see them again soon.