Among the many classic bands that re-united, the classic Dutch death metal band had also been resurrected after the failure of C-187. Basically a solo effort of Patrick Mameli, but joined later by some Pestilence veterans, like Patrick Uterwijk and Tony Choy. But no Martin van Drunen. Anyway, they even recorded a new album which was received with a lot of mixed responses. Not in the least a bit of a mixed bag in my opinion too, as it is fairly different from the old material. They also set up a small European tour split over April and June. I went to the gig in Dordrecht which takes place is a former church.

There was only one support slot: The New Dominion. When they got on stage they seemed vaguely familiar, and I thought I had seen them live before. That turned out to be correct, when I checked it back home later. In any case they failed to make an impression then, and they failed again now. Rather dull thrashy, death metal with many metalcore influences. Only few of the audience seem to be interested as most of area in front of the stage was empty.

After half an hour of setting up the stage, one of the guitar-synth songs from the Spheres album was played and Pestilence came on stage. They started with the opening of the new album “Devouring Frenzy”. It seemed that the new songs worked a lot better on stage than on record, possibly due to the rather flat sound of the album. Quickly followed by Chemotherapy off the debut album. The set further consisted of many classic songs of all the four albums as even a Spheres song was played (Mind Reflections). And Mameli was in a rather talkative mood or so it seems that resulted in a lot interaction with the audience. At the end of “Hate Suicide” a drum solo was added (which was rather dull tho) and Tony could showcase has skills in a solo supported by drums as well. Never mind that tho… The set ended with Land of Tears eventually followed by an encore of “Out of the Body” which Mameli called a fan favourite as well as his own favourite song. But then where was “Twisted Truth”, “Stigmatized”, “The Trauma”, “Dehydrated”, just to name a few. Well, anyway I didn’t have very high expectations of this gig, due to the new album and some stuff I read. But it turned out to be better than I had hoped. A pretty good show indeed.

• Devouring Frenzy
• Chemotherapy
• The Process of Suffocation
• Horror Detox
• Chronic Infection
• The Secrecies of Horror
• Fiend
• Mind Reflections
• Hate Suicide
• Prophetic Revelations
• Lost Souls
• Land of Tears
  Encore:
• Out of the Body