Napalm Death had a new album out for a while, but hadn’t done a decent club tour as far as I know in Europe. So it was time to make that up. The toured got the name “Campaign For Musical Destruction Tour 2010” with two stops in the Netherlands, 7 November being the first gig of the tour in Drachten in a club – Iduna – I had never been before.

I mostly missed the first band, Devious who was the local support act. But I wasn’t really interested in them in the first place. Pretty much straight forward death metal.

The second band was Waking The Cadaver. I read a couple of reviews that made them sound like they really suck, so I had little expectations. But I wasn’t too disappointed as they really sucked horse shit. Lots of blast beats, wanky breaks and hardcore riffing, plus a gorilla for a singer. Next

I had seen Macabre just a short while ago which was a pretty okay gig. I recall gigs around the release of their Dahmer album which were awesome. But somehow that has worn off and the last 4-5 times I seen them, they were just okay with mostly the same setlist. This time they had really a lot of trouble getting the stage set up. Mostly due to the unprofessional stage hands; stuff like missing wires for microphones and drum mics. They ultimately found a few rotten once somewhere in the attic I guess, but it took a shit load of time. Eventually Macabre just started playing, seemingly agitated. The sound was still bad. The set was basically the same as in August with a few songs missing. And the playing sloppy. Not to mention that the drums(!) were nearly inaudible. Probably the worst Macabre gig of the 10 or so I’ve seen. But not really their fault I guess.

Immolation

also took a pretty long time to set up, but at least their sound was pretty good. With an excellent new album under their belt, they naturally played a whole lot of them, starting with the album opener The Purge. The band was in excellent condition as they nailed down song after song with only really short breaks in between and full of enthusiasm and aggression. Robert plays his complex parts flawlessly, whilst swinging his guitar. Ross hammers his bass frantically and doing the vocals in the meantime. And Steve is all over his drumkit all the time. I couldn’t really the second guitarist. In the approximately 40 minutes they got they mostly the newer albums, but slipped in a few older songs too, including Once Ordained, Father You’re Not A Father and Immolation. Awesome gig, but I didn’t expect any less from this excellent band. Hopefully they do a headlining tour any time soon, as I’d still like to hear songs like Christ’s Cage live some time. And an Immolation gig shouldn’t be without the epic Close To A World Below.

After that excellent gig, it would surprise me big time if Napalm Death could outclass that. Shane had promised to put in some older songs they hadn’t played for a while. At least they fulfilled that promise with songs like Mentally Murdered, MAD, Pride Assassin, and some cover songs like Conform by Siege and Politicians by Raw Power. Other than that we got a whole bunch of classics like Scum, You Suffer, Suffer the Children, Nazi Punks Fuck Off, Greed Killing, The World Keeps Turning, Lucid Fairytale. And some newer songs such as On The Brink Of Extinction, Continuing War On Stupidity, one track from Enemy of the Music Business, but I don’t recall the title. The band played well, Barney was running around like a madman, but it seems his throat has become hoarser over the years, he wasn’t sounding all that brutal. And of course we got all the socio-political rants before pretty much all the songs. Pretty solid gig, perhaps they need to warm up a little. No match for Immolation though.