Sanatorium, Deadborn - Killed At Birth Fest in Berlin
While some of my colleagues were partying at a show of The Locust in Utrecht, the Netherlands, I was on vacation in Berlin, Germany. Not really a bad thing if you consider that I now had the opportunity to visit the Killed At Birth Fest in the venue ‘K17’ - and so I took my dad to witness the last two bands at this brutal event.The first of them was Deadborn, the actual reason why I was here. This band, with the ex-vocalist and ex-drummer of Necrophagist in their ranks, released their excellent debut record Stigma Eternal on Massacre Records in last year’s autumn. Naturally, most of the songs during their set came from that album, but because I’m very common with those tracks I was slightly disappointed with the sound because the awesome groove on their record wasn’t well audible in this venue. The bassdrum and toms were lost in the mix, the volume of the guitar however was loud enough - so recognizing the technical play was easy and very pleasant. At the end I found their set a bit short, but for the band it was probably long enough after an intense performance. Consequently because of that, a “Zugabe” was no option. All in all still a good show though!
Headliner of this year’s Killed At Birth Fest was Sanatorium, a quartet from the Slovak Republic. I expected a death metal band with an old school style, but when I saw their merchandise with the slogan “brutal guttural sickness” on it, I already changed my expectations. The soundcheck was short and led by the singer who exactly knew how they would present their sound the best: with an extremely triggered bassdrum and a loud bass guitar. After a noisy breakcore intro it became clear why, ‘cause when the band kicked in, they indeed sounded brutal as fuck - yet on a really technical basis, noticeable through their skilled drummer and amazing bass player. Deathgrind at its best I’d say! Too bad that the venue wasn’t really filled because if it was, total chaos would be the result. After again a relatively short set and one song as encore the band had to leave the stage due to another upcoming event in the same hall. I was only short present at K17, but it for sure was a fine break of my vacation.