After some earlier cooperation�s between record label Fear Dark and St�dsj in Barneveld they now organized a little metal festival together. The festival was named Into The Depths Of Metal and the headliner of this night was Morphia, which already played in Barneveld a year ago. I think this is my fifth year as coordinator/volunteer there and the people in Barneveld are always against metal events, but this time it was �okay�, because all 5 bands that played this night were Christian and religion is a big issue in this narrow-minded village in the middle of The Netherlands.
Opening band for this mini-festival was Organic Matter. This young band from Delft had the opportunity to play a 45-minutes show, but that was a bit too long for them I guess. Between the songs it was sometimes deadly quiet. The doors opened at 15:30 and everybody was afraid that Organic Matter would play for an empty venue, but the venue was packed with about 100 metalheads though � with a maximum capacity of about 200 � so this was against all expectations. The songs they played were a bit standard, but hey� they have a long road ahead of them, they�re young and they will learn more and more with every show they play.
Second band on stage was Docile. I recently saw these guys opening up for Mortification (read it here) and I really enjoyed myself while seeing this band. Today it wasn�t anything different. They played some tight death metal with some nice melodic guitar parts in it and that�s it. Nothing more, nothing less. Just an enjoyable show! After getting something to eat it was time for me to witness the only foreign band, namely Willow�s Whisper from Belgium. This female fronted metal band � gothic rock/metal � did a really great job amongst the audience and they received a lot of positive feedback. This was their first gig in The Netherlands and after the show they told us that they wanted to do more Dutch gigs, because they enjoyed everything about it. If you like this kind of music you should definitely check them out if you�ll get the change.
Picture Of The Moon was about to play next. I heard some songs on their MySpace and I really liked what I heard. Live it was unfortunately a bit chaotic. Their stage performance was okay, but their music wasn�t as good as I thought it would be. Maybe it was the sound, maybe it was something else, but when the show was over I had the feeling that they were capable of much more. Morphia then was a worthy headliner of this little metal event. They played songs from every record they have and they created a perfect atmosphere. Every visitor was carried away by their doom metal and they received a great response. The negative thing about the whole show was the sound. During the first half of the set there was an annoying peep in the sound. The soundmen didn�t know what it was and therefore it took them way too long to fix it. Morphia�s second time in this little youth centre was once again a big success though. After their performance there was a little after-party with a local DJ. Everybody was having a great time and hopefully this event will return next year!