This has been the sixth instance of the annual Dutch Doom Day festival with 15 international doom bands in two days. It is one of the few doom only festival, along with the German Doom Shall Rise. The festival typically hosts doom bands from all sides of the extreme – from classic doom, drone/sludge doom, doom/death to funeral doom.

The opening band of this year was the Dutch stoner doom band Heavy Lord who were a last minute replacement for Eria D’or. Now stoner has never been my favourite metal, but this band was quite good within the genre, with sufficient variation to not become boring and repetitive. And with a band that has seemingly a lot of fun on stage, it was a more than decent opening of this festival.

Second was the band Autumnal from Spain, who play melodic doom death, a genre generally more of my liking. I wasn’t very impressed with their album “Grey Universe” when I heard it a while ago, but live their performance was very impressive even with one member missing – their cellist. Excellent lead guitar work, and strong vocals – despite the somewhat awkward English – are the key points in this band. So it’s definitively a band that deserves another listen.

The first English band of the day (with four more to come) was the female fronted band the river, who venture at something amid classic doom and stoner doom. I never dug female fronted bands much or female vocals in general with few exceptions, so this was not something of my liking, even though the music is quite okay, in the end it bored me. And the band not appearing with much enthusiasm, didn’t help much either.

Imindain was the second English band of the day and even though I hadn’t heard them before I had set my expectations quite high for this doom death band. And they did definitively not disappoint. Heavy, distorted guitars over slow rhythms with much melody without becoming cheesy, basically the way I like my doom the most. The only spot on this strong band are the weak clean vocals, but as they aren’t used much and the grunts are strong it doesn’t bother much.

A bit of a strange band on this festival are the Irish warriors of Mael Mordha. They classify themselves as Gaelic doom metal, but I hear very few doom elements. They remind me most of early Primordial (country mates) but with some folk influences – a parallel that is easily drawn. The whole band was painted in what I guess is traditional Irish war paint, with the singer dressed entirely in traditional clothing. On their album they did not impress me much; one, I don’t like folk influences in metal music and two, the clean vocals put me off. However on stage they made a very strong impression as a pagan metal band with the entire band giving all and a vocalist with a very strong presence (reminding me once more of Primordial’s singer, although Mr. Nemtheanga is a much better singer). So another band who’s album I need to give a second listen.

A bit of time to rest then for me with the German Mirror of Deception who I had seen before and failed to impress me. And so they failed to impress me this time again. Their doom metal just doesn’t appeal to me.

It would be the tenth time in five or so years that I’d see Officium Triste, so I knew what to expect – melodic doom death that is never very original but still very recognisable. And this band always gives a steady set and so it was this time. The set list was filled with six tracks of their last three albums without any real surprises (This Inner Twist, On The Crossroads of Souls, In Pouring Rain, My Charcoal Heart, The Pathway, Goodbye). And again this was a steady performance of this band, with singer Pim apparently a bit agitated.

The headliner of the first day were the Maltase band Forsaken whom I wasn’t familiar with. The band plays classic doom metal in the vein of bands like Candlemass. Overall this was a decent band with a good singer even, but they never are as good as their examples. The cover that they played of Candlemass, the classic track Solitude was good but no more and that was the overall feeling I had with this show – just good but nothing special.

So all in all this first day was interesting enough and I’m looking forward to the second day with appearances from the mighty Esoteric and Indesinence.