Ceremony is a more or less local band who released a cult death metal album in 1990s. Shortly after its release the band called it quits, only to resurface several decades later, followed by the release of their second album in 2019. Now they had just released a new album and played a show to accompany it in The Hague.

But first there van Von Mollenstein. A bit of a peculiar industrial black metal band from the Netherlands. Drums and some keyboard came out from a tape. The drums sounded artificial and that I suppose makes it industrial I guess. The drums actually sounded pretty horrible. The vocals were matching quality here. The singer wore a face mask, apparently as some sort of Cenobite, and had laser pointers in his gloves. The bass sounded quite basic but prominent in the mix. The guitarist had some cool riffs and could actually play quite well. That was definitely the highlight of this gig.

The next band was a German band called MNHG. I had never heard of them. The singer looked like a blond version of Peter Steele with corpse paint. The band wore clothes that looked like some right extremist youth organisation. And they were said to play black’n’roll for whatever that may be. It sounded more like traditional heavy metal most of the time with some more distortion and some raspy vocals – all quite laid-back. It was probably the most wimpy kind of black metal I have seen. The lead guitarist played some intricate guitar solos – also more akin to heavy metal or neoclassical metal that were actually quite good. Not many in the venue were interest in the slightest. And the band seemed quite uninspired too and quite after less than half an hour.

Then it was time for Ceremony. They had a new drummer again recently and their bass player got replaced too a while back and he also handled the vocals. The guitar duo are now the only remaining founding members. Style-wise they also changed over the years. Where the debut was pretty straight-up death metal of the times, their newer album mixes in some black metal, doom and most of all orchestral parts. The latter as well as female vocals in some of the songs came from a tape. The guitar sound was a bit thin in the beginning and the vocals a little loud in the mix, but that was fixed after a song. The new drummer made a few mistakes, one song ended strange and another the tempo was wrong. And they only played songs of their new album. Maybe even all – as I hadn’t heard the album beforehand – but not in order at least as Rites of Sacrifice was played last. I would have liked to hear some of the older songs too. So it was a bit short, barely 45 minutes. But a cool show, the new album sounds quite fresh, yet I have seen them better live.