Pessimist is one of the many American death metal bands that is also there, even though they have made three quite good albums, and have been around for long time. Being a bit late to the ball doesn’t help either. As far as I know they have never toured in Europe before. And now they are playing in Musicon which is within biking distance for me. Unfortunately it was raining on this Wednesday evening. They brought one support slot and even though there was a timeslot reserved for a third band it wasn’t filled in. Two not so well-known bands means a low turnout though. The venue – small as it is – wasn’t even half-full.

The opening band came from Italy, namely Demiurgon. They play modern, technical death metal. They started out with some more atmospheric and melodic part, but after that switch to technical riffs and blast beats. Having no bass player resulted in missing some low end rumble. It was okay for a first band.

Pessimist has a more old-school death metal sound. I expected them actually to play a lot of songs from their debut, but the first half of the set was all new songs. A new album is apparently in the works. The new songs sounded quite good though. Most of the other songs came from their second album and the single they released a couple of years ago Keys to the Underworld. They did seem to enjoy themselves though and played two encores even for which the second was surely unplanned. Pretty good gig for a band that deserves a little more attention.