The Golden Earring is a band I had wanted to see for a long time. As a teenager I was a pretty big fan, but that sort of waned after I got older. However, I never happened to see them live for various reasons. They are – I guess – the oldest rock band still […]

The first gig of the year for me is the album release show of Apophys is the Hedon club, not all that close by, but I could combine it with some family visits. Even though all three bands on the bill are more or less local bands, they drew quite some crowd. So Hedon’s small […]

Winter set in this weekend that Testament were playing in Haarlem as the final gig of the Brotherhood of the Snake tour. Snow covered the low lands and as a result traffic on the roads and rails was a mess. Fortunately, by the time I had to leave for Haarlem most of the snowfall had […]

The third gig in a week for me…. these are busy times. This time a little closer by and hence I took my bike instead of the car and had no trouble with traffic and all that. Destruction played in the Gebr. De Nobel in Leiden with two support acts. Maybe they are the least […]

I’m not much of a fan of power metal usually, but Helloween’s double album Keeper of the Seven Keys is an exception to that rule. Possibly because it was one of the first metal albums I got into. Later albums couldn’t interest me much as they were weirder and when singer Michael Kiske left they […]

The Chilean doom metal band Procession – though operating out of Sweden – has just released a new album called Doom Decimation and they thought it to be a good idea to tour around Europe a bit to promote it. The only Dutch date is in Rotterdam. So I decided to check them out. They […]

I had never been to the new TivoliVredenburg venue. The building is pretty huge, especially compared to the clubs I usually go to. It is several floors high and has many halls. Paradise Lost played at the sixth floor. So that meant many escalator trips up. The opening band was the Portugese Sinistro. They play […]

Onslaught and Artillery were supposed to tour a year ago or so, but unfortunately that tour got cancelled. And two cult 1980s thrash bands on a tour is quite rare anyway. Strangely enough the two two gigs in the Netherlands were both in the northern region. I went to the southern most one, in the […]

As I wanted to see Vallenfyre as well and the nearest gigs for both them and Memoriam were on the same day, I had to travel a bit further to Helmond to see Memoriam. A band formed as a tribute to the way too early departed Martin Kearns, drummer of Bolt Thrower which also incurred […]