Esoteric is doing a really short European tour (about 5 gigs) of which one is in the Netherlands. In the W2 in Den Bosch to be precise. A venue I had never been before. With the extreme doom metal that Esoteric plays it was not to be expected that this would even be close to selling out the venue of this size. And it wasn’t. The sole support act couldn’t change this either.

The support act was no other than former Gorefest drummer Ed Warby’s doom band The 11th Hour. On the album he plays all the instruments himself (except the grunts which are handled by Rogga Johansson), but on stage he sticks to only clean vocals and guitar. Another former Gorefest member played guitar, and two members of Officium Triste stepped in to handle the grunts and third guitar (but why they need a third guitar is beyond me). I didn’t recognise the drummer or the bassplayer. Anyway, the music is a little hard for me to digest; it is mostly played on the same same slow pace. And I don’t really like the clean vocals much. Most of the songs seem a bit more of the same. Then again some of the lead guitar work was quite interesting and original.

After the stage curtains opened for the second time, the UK extreme doom metal band Esoteric was ready to start. This must be the first gig where they can actually easily put all their gear on stage. Most of the venues I have seen them play have much smaller stage and even the bass player has two huge boxes of effects equipment. And they also lost their keyboard player, so the samples wear played off a laptop by the drummer this time. But Esoteric was in great shape once again but in all 5 times I had seem them before, they never did a bad gig. They started with two tracks of their latest album (The Order of Destiny and Beneath This Face) which is nothing short of stellar. The second song even speeds up beyond the common boundaries of doom to a quick blast beat. Then – well over 20 minutes later – we got the one of their best songs ever: The Blood of the Eyes. After the short Caucus of Mind – a mere 7 minutes – it even got better. The final track was from the Metamorphogenesis album called Dissident. And surprisingly they even came back to play an encore which I have never seen them do before. Nothing short of another brilliant gig by this outstanding and highly original band.