After some 20 years the Wehrmacht had reformed last year. And they did a gig in their hometown Portland of which some videos can be found on youtube. But those didn’t sound too good really, mostly much slower than their album renditions. Nevertheless a European tour got announced for Fall 2010. So I was really interested to see if any more rehearsing they claimed they did had helped.

I had missed the first band , a DRI cover band called Madman (actually just Rompeprop) due to traffic jams in Eindhoven. Who’d expect it that it would take more than half an hour to get across the city centre. No big deal tho as I wasn’t really interested in them anyway.

The second band was the tour support act from Austin Texas Blunt Force Trauma. Basically a crossover band with the DRI drummer. The straightforwardness and simplicity of this type of music makes it rather uninteresting. Even though the band did their thing well enough. And the crowd mostly enjoyed it.

Then we got Suicidal Failure. A local cover band that only plays Suicidal Tendencies covers. Now I don’t really get the idea of cover bands – who’d want to hear a band trying to play another band’s songs as close to the original as possible. But playing only songs of one band is complete bullshit. And rather shameful to let them play after a real band too. Did they do it badly, not really. I’m no fan of Suicidal Tendencies but it sounded all right.

And then finally the stage was set up for the Wehrmacht. The intro from Jaws was played on guitar from the dressing rooms and then the band came on stage and started off the title track of their debut album “Shark Attack”. Unfortunately the drum pedal broke down early in the song and they had to stop. Apparently a bit confused they continued the song eventually but rather a bit messy. That all was fixed in the second song “You Broke My Heart So I Broke Your Face” and the rest of the set was played excellently. Pretenceless as this band has ever been – with a huge beer-drinking and partying image all around them – they have always been a pretty good band and FAST. Music-wise somewhat like SOD but more thrash all the way… oh and a lot faster. They seemed to have picked up their speed since 2009 again, as it all sounded excellent only the drums a tad slower perhaps. As expected the set list was filled with classic songs of both their albums plus a cover of Accept (Fast as a Shark) which became the first encore. Night of Pain, arguably their best song followed, concluding the set with the ultrashort E. A really good gig all in all and the crowd seemed to enjoy it a lot too with stagedivers filling the stage all the time.

Setlist:

• Shark Attack
• You Broke My Heart So I Broke Your Face
• Drink Beer Be Free
• Gore flix
• Suck My Dick
• Jabberjaw
• Drink Jack / Sharko
• The Wehrmacht
• Napalm Shower
• Balance of Opinion
• Radical Neck Dissection
• United Shoe Brothers
• Beermacht
• –Encores–
• Fast As A Shark
• Night of Pain
• E