Tilburg’s biggest venue 013 once again invited sextet Chimaira to play the Dommelsch-stage. This time a co-headlining show with Lamb Of God, who were closing the night, as well as with metalcore act As I Lay Dying who had the honour to open for these two.

While As I Lay Dying’s show started really early there already was a big crowd to fuck shit up in the pit; but that’s of course not really surprising because the type of metalcore these guys play still is enormously popular among the younger metalfans. This style is often characterized by the clean vocals which come up in the chorus, which were taken care of by the guitar player. The problem that many of these metalcore bands always have is that these clean vocals are so mediocre, as was the case tonight with AILD; there was a severe lack of strong and powerful clean vocals. Most interesting song was ’Distance is Darkness’, but the audience unfortunately didn’t know what to do with a slightly more complicated riff. Overall it wasn’t a bad show, but they can’t really stand out between all those other metalcore acts and I wonder whether they will forever end their show with ’Forever’. (Sledgehammer Messiah)

This is Chimaira’s first European tour after the release of Resurrection, and frankly I couldn’t wait to hear some of that stuff live! The band kicked in with ’Nothing Remains’, followed by ’Resurrection’. The crowd loved it, but the band itself didn’t seem as enthusiastic as usually. Also drummer Andols made some mistakes here and there, which could be forgiven if he didn’t play some fast parts a bit slower than they’re intended to be. This is annoying I think. Nevertheless the band put on an enjoyable show with a lot of great songs, like ’Cleansation’, ’Powertrip’. ’Severed’, ’Inside The Horror’, ’Pleasure In Pain’ and a bunch more. In the end I was a bit disappointed, but luckily I saw them again at Graspop, where the show was a lot better. (DemonDust)

Although announced as a co-headlining gig, it was clear that Lamb Of God was tonight’s main act, delighted as the last band to play as well as more playtime then Chimaira. Chimaira’s gig was already pretty intense but the audience clearly had enough energy left, a lot of kids were active in a big pit that formed immediately when opening song ‘Hourglass’ kicked in. Lamb Of God did a long set with relatively many tracks from their latest record Sacrament (for example the hit singles ‘Redneck’ and ‘Walk With Me In Hell’) varied with true LoG-classics (‘Laid To Rest’, ‘11th Hour’, ‘Bloodletting’, ‘As The Palaces Burn’ and ‘Now You’ve Got Something To Die For’). A big circlepit came into existence during the accelerating part in the middle of ‘Vigil’, and a wall of death was organised by Willie Adler when they were about to play ‘Black Label’. I can’t say anything negative about the performance because I had a damn good time closely to the stage. My only complaint can be about the sound that sometimes wasn’t optimal. Some guitar riffs were lost in the mix and the drums should have been a bit louder as the great fill of Chris Adler in ‘Ruin’ wasn’t hearable very well. Further on a great pure American metal-night! (Mindsaver)