The season for outdoor festivals has started again. This years Graveland Fest is at another location than last year. Not in a forest but in a meadow. And it had rained a lot the last months, so it was a big muddy mess. Fortunately some planks in front of the stage helped to keep dry […]

Graveland is now one of the three metal fest in the area of southern Drente in the Netherlands. Quite odd as it is one of the least inhabited provinces of the Netherlands. Anyway, this years edition was primarily interesting for the headliner of the Friday, namely Dismember. The Saturday was headlined by Paradise Lost, which […]

Demilich are Finnish death metal band from the early 1990s. They play a rather oddball kind of death metal with peculiar, but technical riffs and extremely low guttural vocals. I am not sure if they ever toured in support of their sole album, released in 1993. At least I never got to see them live […]

Two bands were celebrating this afternoon gig on a warm Sunday in Tilburg. Acrostichon exists 30 for 30 years, although they have been inactive for some time and their latest new material is from the 90s. Their debut album is still one of the best Dutch death metal albums. And Pentacle who also existed for […]

A two-day festival that takes place all the way up north in the country. The line-up wasn’t all that interesting. Except for one particular band, namely King Diamond on Saturday. I skipped the Friday entirely and only went on Saturday, even skipping most of the afternoon, in part because the line-up wasn’t very interesting and […]

This years line up wasn’t really interesting, except for the final day, for me there was one must-see band, namely Intestine Baalism. There were a couple of other bands I like to see, too. So I skipped the first two days and only went the Sunday. The first band I saw were the Belgian Possession […]

After many, many years the legendary band De Raggende Manne have released a new album. And a tour through the Netherlands was planned. Shortly before the start of the tour, singer Bob Fosko was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Nevertheless they opted to do the tour and plan Bob’s treatments to effect the tour as little […]

Another day, another gig. Thanatos were celebrating their 35 years anniversary in their home-town of Rotterdam. The Baroeg was already quite full when I arrived. The first band of the evening was Graceless. A relatively new death metal band, playing rather slow old school death metal. It’s based around mostly a simple riff and straightforward […]

The Schoonebeek Death Fest is a relatively new and quite small outdoor festival. I think it is the second installment, and they aimed at 400 visitors. I’m not sure there were that many tho. Nevertheless, they organised a interesting line-up, featuring a number of bands from the Raw Skull records roster, who organised the festival, […]

Long before there was Black Metal, there was an American band called Coven. Founded in 1967 and active until the mid-1970s, they were the first band to incorporate occult and Satanic imagery and lyrics, culminating in the track “Satanic Mass”. And they also contributed the sign of the horns into music. Strangely enough the opening […]