The first band on the bill was Far From Passive, who sounded like they�ve been playing for only a couple of weeks. It�s cool that they got to open for the rest of the bands tonight, but I always have trouble dealing with such low quality. Therefore I won�t review this band in comparison to the other ones, but I�ll just say that after seeing three songs of this newly formed band I took it upon myself to smoke me a joint outside. Yeah.

 

Up next was the band Make Them Suffer, this band had some more skills up their sleeves, especially the guitar and bass department improved drastically. The quality of the drums was still far too low, as were the vocals (I mean anybody can lay down a cool scream/grunt if you hold your hands all the way over the mic). But again, this is a band that hasn�t been around for too long and I must say that I liked some of the riffs I heard, so they didn�t do a bad job after all. And when they busted out a cover (I don�t remember which one) they got some real violence going on in the small bar, in which a friend of mine had his hand sliced open by glass. Brutal!

 

Third band tonight was the only one I knew; Anger Alliance with my friend Cor on drums. This was the fastest and most brutal band of tonight, with a tendency to lean more towards metal than hardcore. I mean, it was obvious people in this band listen to stuff like Fear Factory and Devildriver and such. I must say I was pretty impressed by Cor�s drumming capabilities, for he bashed the kit pretty hard and pretty tight from what I saw. The band as a whole was pretty tight because of this fact, but I can�t say I really heard a memorable song or something. The songs themselves never really convince or grab you by the balls, but it doesn�t take an expert to see that there�s talent in this band. Good brutal vocals (one-dimensional as fuck alas) and a heavy brutal metal sound might take Anger Alliance places someday.

 

I had never heard any music of Strength Above All, which was about to change drastically. I expected to see four starting bands tonight with average talent at most, but these guys changed the whole story. Basically everything was right about this hardcore/metalcore band. I can conclude this when I feel certain parts coming in a song, like the breakdowns and stuff, it just all felt like it was in the right place. The (unfortunately again one-dimensional) brutal vocals really added to the performance, while the killer riffs got me actually a bit excited. This for sure isn�t any less than a band like Born From Pain or something, it just needs some more experience and some more exposure because the talent in this band is about to really manifest itself if you ask me. Check this out if you get the chance, a must see for every Dutch hardcore-metalcore fan for sure.