The 18th instalment of this annual festival again. It focuses on doom metal and is organised by the Belgian doom metal band Marche Funebre. I have been to a few of those festivals if the line-up was interesting enough. Often it is held in different locations, this time in Kortrijk, Almost 2.5 hour drive from where I live. I skipped the opening band Ka’una as I didn’t like its predecessor Thurisaz much and it was starting quite early.

So I dropped in when the Spanish Sun of the Dying were setting up. I hadn’t heard them before even though they have three albums out. They play doom / death metal with some clean vocals thrown in the mix too. Pretty decent band for starting the day. Nothing terribly innovative, maybe a bit too much keyboards. They have some cool riffs and lead guitar work. The vocals seem to lack some punch, at least live.

The second band was Counting Hours. A Finnish band featuring one member of Shape of Despair. They however sound little like them though. The music is kind of mellow doom death metal. They brought three guitar players but it seemed a bit over done as for most parts they played the same riffs. The songs are fairly short for doom metal. And as I didn’t know their songs it seems like they kind of blurred together.

The third band I watched was the organisers of the festival, the Belgian Marche Funebre. I was a little late for the start of the gig as the venue was very close to the city centre and the weather was beautiful I went to do a little sightseeing in the city in between the gigs. It’s not every day I go to Kortrijk. Anyway they were playing their first song when I came in. I never really clicked with this band much even though I saw them a few times live before. They aren’t bad though. And so it was this time. A pretty much okay gig from a pretty much okay band.

The main reason I wanted to go to this festival though were the last two bands. First up was Shape of Despair from Finland. They make funeral doom metal of the bleakest kind. Musically captivating if I’m in the mood, if not their long songs can become a bit tedious. This time in a live setting, it was interesting. The haunting melodies, and simple riffs over the slow but varied drums, and of course the contrasting angelic female vocals and male grunts. Pretty great gig.

The last band of the evening was the doom metal progenitors themselves, namely Candlemass. I never got to see them live much, twice before, once with Messiah after their reunion and once with Robert Lowe on vocals. Now they have Johan Langquist back behind the mic. The rest of the band are from the Nightfall line-up. And as they were around for more than 40 years they would play only the really old stuff. Opening with Bewitched followed by Mirror, Mirror set the mood right. Even though the music is generally quite simple it is still powerful enough. Yet Leif and Mappe starting to look quite old, Mappe missed some bit and pieces in his playing though. Yet Janne’s drumming sounded still powerful and Lars’ lead guitar too. The vocals however were a different thing Johan sang on the debut album with quite some high notes in it. Now he sounds quite hoarse and midrange. The band is showing their age, nevertheless it was quite cool to seem them again live after probably 18 years or so. Any way the seemed to enjoy it still themselves as after the two encores, The Well of Souls and of course Solitude, the played a 3rd encore not on the set listn in the form of Demon’s Gate.