Sacred Reich did a short tour through Europe this autumn. Starting at the festival Helldorado in Eindhoven, they ended it with a headlining gig in Leiden. As there were no supports on the tour, the venue added one.

So the Dutch Martyr played first. They are founded in 1982 and they play fairly traditional heavy metal. I wasn’t all that familiar with them, but I had seen them live before. I wasn’t impressed then, and I wasn’t too impressed today either. There is some interesting lead guitar work, but generally the riffs and drums are too simple. And the vocals are mostly midrange with some falsetto screams.

Then it was time for Sacred Reich. They had just replaced their drummer a couple of weeks back, but the new kid did absolutely fine. They opened with The American Way, with its still more than relevant lyrics. The set list was fairly short, only 12 songs as apparently they didn’t have opportunity to learn more songs with the new drummer yet. The result of that was long talk – rants – by Phil in between the songs, which became annoying after a few times. The focus was mostly on older songs with a couple of songs from Awakening thrown in. Apart from the pretty meh Salvation they sounded alight. The older material though is a lot stronger, with Ignorance being their best release by far. The set ended with the perpetual Who’s To Blame and Surf Nicaragua with the Black Sabbath Cover War Pigs in between. Pretty cool gig apart from the long rants. Bring more songs next time.