The second instalment of this festival to take place in the 013 venue in Tilburg was plagued by problems. The initial announcement showed a great number of doom metal bands on the bill, but after a couple of weeks the number was reduced to only 6 and limited to a single hall. Nevermind as most of the bands I was interested in seeing were still going to be there, except Funeralium. Shortly before the festival the Primordial drummer was hospitalised so the band had to cancel. There were some new bands added, but none interesting. And I still haven’t seen Primordial play a full set – so that is quite a let down. Nevertheless, there were still a few bands I was interested to see – and I had tickets already, I went anyway.

I skipped the first two band Bunkur and Serpentcult, as I don’t like them at all. So the first band I saw was the Swedish Korgh which play droning / sludge doom or so. Not really my thing but varied enough to not be totally boring.

The second band was another Swedish band Switchblade who also play drone / sludge doom, but really, really slow and really, really dull and with little variation.

The third band was a bit more interesting, beforehand. The Swiss Mordor had trouble setting up as they couldn’t get the vocals connected somehow, but in the end they managed, starting some 10 minutes late. They started their gig with some sort of heathen prayer / chanting that took way too long anyway. But when that was done they actually started playing. Weirdly thought, most of the music was played off tape (or harddisk or whatever), only the guitar parts were played live and the vocals, but the drums and the rather dominant synths were recordings. Apparently they didn’t care to arrange for a real drummer, the stuff was simple enough for any drummer to play it. The music however was rather bland and missed any good riffs and leads, and with the distorted vocals it ended up into a rather another dull performance.

Then there finally was the first band I was really interested in seeing. Apparently, Leif Edling of Candlemass isn’t able to put all his creativity in that band so he created Krux. Not that the music is far off from Candlemass, but it’s a bit more progressive and Sabbathesque. The band had only done some 10 gigs in the past, so this was a pretty rare experience. unfortunately their regular guitarist couldn’t make it so Leif hired two replacements – Mappe from Candlemass and some one whose name I couldn’t hear. That mattered little, as the band put down a very steady performance, with song from both albums. The set list included songs like Black Room, Devil Sun, Sea of Doom, Nimis, Krux, Omfalos, Pococàtepetl, Depressive Strokes of Indigo. And with a band that was quite active on stage, especially singer Mats, that lead to quite a good gig.

The last band already were the UK godfathers of doom-death My Dying Bride. Since more than 10 years they now have a violin player again, which enables them to play some of the classic old songs again. And they did, opening with the song “Here in the Throat”, and followed immediately by the “Songless Bird”. Even one of my favourites was played “From Darkest Skies”. More classics followed by “The Snow in my Hand” and “The Cry of Mankind”. After that they played a few newer songs and went off stage. Shortly to return and play two more “Vast Choirs” from the debut and the awesome title track off “The Dreadful Hours”. A third encore was played: “The forever People”. Aaron spoke little in between songs but was reasonably good singing, his clear vocals were a bit thin, but he seemed to get more into it halfway through the set. The rest of the band played great though. A great show really, but with only 75 minutes, it was too short.

Setlist:

• Here in the Throat
• Songless Bird
• From Darkest Skies
• And I walked with Them
• Cry of Mankind
• The Snow In My Hand
• Black Heart Romance
• Vast Choirs
• To Remain Tombless
• The Dreadful Hours
• The Forever People