So this was the second date of the Mourning Beloveth tour after the gig two weeks ago in the Baroeg. But this time all the three bands played longer and there was a local band opening.That local band was Faal whom I heard a lot of good about, and who sound pretty good on CD too. So I was curious to see how that would work out live. And as it turned out, it was actually quite good. They managed to play 4 songs in some 45 minutes of mostly death/doom with some Disembowelment-like burst of speed at some times. Even tho they have a full-time keyboard-player, her parts were hardly audible (which is quite common anyway for keyboards in extreme metal bands).

Second band was the Canadian Longing for Dawn who play a kind of experimental doom also with some keyboards but run from a computer this time. The music is generally quite slow and not very riff-centred but seems to focus more on soundscapes. Not really my thing. But they had an enthusiatic singer.

The band that inspired me to drive down to Eindhoven actually was Mournful Congregation after being impressed a whole lot 2 weeks earlier. No intro this time, the band directly started with “Mother – Water, the Great Sea Wept” of the amazing “Monad of Creation” album. This extremely long song (18 minutes) was played perfectly. Nearly all their songs are really long but really well arranged into great songs. Even though some of the riffs are drawn out fairly long, they never become boring. All their albums got touched including “Suffer the Storms”, “Suicide Choirs” in almost an hour. During the last song they were joined by Darren and Stefan of Mourning Beloveth and Longing for Dawn on vocals. This really is an amazing band and they pull it off live as well.

The Irish lads from Mourning Beloveth started their headlining appearance by “The Sickness”. Frank’s vocals seemed to be off a bit as well as his guitar play appeared a bit sloppy throughout the gig while the rest appeared rock-steady. “The mountains Are Mine” off the debut album was second. Further the set included “Narcissistic Funeral”, “Primeval Rush”, “Part One”, and ended with “The Apocalypse Machine”. Not a bad show really, but I’ve seen them better. That may be a bit due to their newer material which doesn’t seem to be as grand as their first 2 albums and they only play few songs of those albums these days.