By Inheritance is one of the best thrash metal albums ever released, unfortunately I hadn’t been able to see the mighty Artillery live yet. As they’ve been reactivated a couple of years ago, the got around to touring only in 2013, on the Speed of Sound tour together with Gama Bomb as co-headliner and two supports. First I wanted to go to Little Devil in Tilburg the week before, but there Gama Bomb would headline and Artillery got only 45 minutes, and I was ill anyway. So I opted for the other Dutch date, which was the last one of the tour. The club Willemeen in Arnhem added one more band as opener as well as an after party with another Dutch band, which I skipped both.

The first band I saw were the Norwegian Tantara. I hadn’t heard of them before. They had just released their debut album, and play a style not unlike Exodus and Metallica when they were still thrash. It sounded okay, but musically a bit simple and samish so it got dull after a few songs.

The second band exists for more than 20 years and yet I never had heard of them. Torture Squad are from Brazil and play thrashy death metal, somewhat in the vein of Incubator. Except that they get really boring after a song or two. Nevertheless their enthusiasm is awesome.

The Irish Gama Bomb seemed to be the main attraction of the evening as the crowd was moshing and stage diving from start to finish. Quite a difference from their previous gigs I saw, where the crowd was more laid back. Their thrash metal fast, sound a bit on the happy side. But the band really having a good time, the (session?) guitarist even starts crowdsurfing while playing a couple of times. Singer Philly seems to have dropped his falsetto squeals, probably after his throat operation, which makes the vocals a bit more generic. Anyway, the filled the hour they got, playing songs quickly one after another with very few breaks, playing songs from all their albums.

Then the main reason to show up for, the mighty Danish thrashers from Artillery who have a new singer and drummer. But the core of the band is the two brothers on guitar anyway. They start off with a song from their previous album “Rise above it all” and it is immediately evident that the singer is a lot better than their previous singer, although his voice is not as unique as Flemming Rönsdorf’s who sings on all the classic albums. We got quite a few classic songs of their three first albums, as well as a few tunes from the last two albums. But the skipped the intermediate album BACK entirely. The regular set ended with the brilliant Khomaniac and the mandatory Terror Squad. But they added one more song as an encore off the debut album: The Almighty. Awesome gig, great set list, and I hope they’ll come back soon.