It seems that metal gigs start earlier and earlier these days. On this Tuesday, no later than 18.30 the first band got on stage. Ludicrous to be there on a working day and trying to use one of the most jammed motorways in the Netherlands. So I missed the first band entirely – the more or less local band Buried. And I entered the venue when the first touring band was nearly finished; I managed to listen to a song and a half of progressive death metallers Fallujah. Didn’t sound bad from what I heard altho the second guitar was very low it the mix. Lot’s of technical guitar work here.

With the thrash revival of the last couple of years, many new thrash bands appeared playing 80s thrash. One of those is the US Havok The singer/guitarist looks quite a bit like a young Kirk Hammett and the band sounds a lot like the early Exodus and Metallica, although a bit faster in general. The drumming is excellent, fast and hard. Great enthusiasm from the band carried over to the audience and the first pit appeared. Unfortunately not all the songs are all that good, there are quite a few weaker sections.

The last support slot was for Cephalic Carnage. It seems that I had seen them twice before, but I can’t remember one bit of it. I guess they didn’t make much of an impression, then. Anyway, hard to classify this band, their songs are pretty weird, some grind here and there, sometimes more… uhm jazzy stuff, and more brutal death metal like sections. Lots of humour though, wearing “evil” masks during the song Black Metal Sabbath where one of the bassist wore a horsehead mask. Anyway, pretty cool band to watch at a gig but I probably can’t listen to this on album.

The final act was of course the mighty Suffocation. One of the earliest brutal death metal bands and still going strong. That is for this tour only Terrance is an original member, as Frank stayed home and was replaced by the singer of Dying Fetus, and Mike left the band a while back to be replaced by Dave Culross. No big deal, it much better than when Terrance couldn’t appear a couple of years ago. They played a bunch of new songs, but fell back to the early albums as well, Throne of Blood opened the set. Surprisingly very few to no songs of the previous three albums. I’d particularly like to see a song or two of Souls to Deny. But overall a really good gig, tight playing, solid set. And so after an hour it was over at 22.30.