The Metalfest tour brought black-, folk-, blasting death- and grooving death metal together. On this Monday Metalrage was there to check out this remarkable mix and begin the week well with metal, beer and pot. The best combination there possibly can be.

After seeing them half a year ago as support of Vader, I now once again was witnessing the Austrian black metal band Belphegor as supporting act. Back then the sound was okay, but the show itself wasn't spectacular at all. As if they read the critics in my review of that gig, they did it pretty different this time. An awesome lightshow made it a great look for a half filled large hall from the 013. Also the first ranks of the audience were good visible which was fun to see, long hairy metalheads all banged their heads simultaneously to the music. The sound was really fine; both the fast riffing and the solos were good audible, while the drums had a pounding mechanical intonation. Also fewer amounts of interruptions and intros made it a better experience than the previous show. [Mindsaver]

Whoever thought that I ever had to write a live review of Finntroll? I certainly was the last one... but since I was the only reporter in the venue at this time yet, here it is. To be honest, it even wasn't as bad as I expected in advance. My opinion changed at every song, which depended on the amount of 'folk attitude'. On the first one (sorry, I'm not able to name song titles) the keyboards weren't good noticeable and was therefore okay. During the second song the first folk influences of tonight occurred and the crowd loved it, while I abhorred them. These feelings continued the whole show. Folk sucks, but the faster songs and the drum sound (once again a pounding sound and quite a lot cool drum rolls) made it an average show in the end. [Mindsaver]



The band that really got me into death metal years ago was Nile, a band that's still among my favourites in the extreme regions of metal. It has been a while since I've seen them, but of course I didn't miss them here. The first couple of songs had a pretty poor sound, which caused for a not so convincing show. The sound improved and thus did the show, but I never really got overwhelmed like I'm used to with Nile. I have the same feeling about their latest album Ithyphallic, of which they fortunately played the better tracks. But it proved to me that just going extremely fast and technical doesn't cut it for me anymore. Big disappointment was that there were no songs from the debut album to be found on the set list. As for the second album we just got the title track 'Black Seeds Of Vengeance' as the finisher. Luckily some great tracks from the two albums after that one passed by, and I still was reasonably satisfied, but not blown away. The new bass player was pretty damn good, but didn't make the same impression on me as Joe Payne did before. Check him out with Divine Heresy soon! Overall this was far from the best Nile show I've seen, but it was entertaining nonetheless (especially watching George Kollias going berserk on his drumkit). [DemonDust]



Six Feet Under is a band that you have to see live to fully appreciate, I learned tonight. I was never really impressed by the straightforward mid tempo death metal on CD, so I never felt the urge to check them out live. The entire package of this night was a good reason to finally do so and besides that, I just had to see Chris Barnes perform live once. Because what an impressive and charismatic person he still is! Just his appearance and deep low grunts alternated with the truly meanest pig squeels you ever heard could be a headlining show already, as a matter of speaking. Naturally the kind of straightforward death metal Six Feet Under plays falls or stands with a good sound and tight playing. This is absolutely necessary to reinforce the groove of this music and fortunately both conditions were present in killer form, so the show was extremely grooving. Really every song has this great groove, this makes it a bit one sided but it was played so convincingly that I could care less. Six Feet Under simply gave a killer show and showed me that death metal without any blastbeats can be very brutal too. [Sledgehammer]

Pictures by Bert of www.metalshots.com