The last show the domination tour 2007 took place in the Baroeg, in Rotterdamn. This year Rotting Christ was the headliner supported by no less than six other bands.

Opening band of the afternoon was the Greek band Inactive Messiah. They were given 20 minutes to play and frankly that was more than enough. This was completely boring and repetitive, mid-paced death metallish. After four of their songs they played “Raining Blood” by Slayer, at least it was supposed to be, but it was highly simplified and not executed well at all. And it didn’t fit to the style of their own songs either.

The band that named themselves after me, Harm was next and a hell of a lot of an improvement. This is a deathrash combo from Norway and sounds actually quite fresh. The the thrashing riffs and the dominant six-string bass provides a heavy basis, yet I sometimes felt the drummer was a bit sluggish. With a more aggressive drum style this band would actually be quite good. I’m interested in hearing their albums.

Then it was time for the band that attracted me to go: The mighty Neuraxis from Canada. These guys filled their 30-minute time slot with fury. A well-dosed, complex mix of blast beats, high speed riffing, melody completed by aggressive vocals and ditto singer. They went all-out and bashed through their eight tracks which mostly came from their latest album. Their performance can be summarised in one word: “wow”! They should return quickly do to a full set on a headlining performance.

Set list:

1. The Apex
2. A Curative Struggle
3. Thought Adjuster
4. Clarity
5. Monitoring the Mind
6. Clarity
7. Shatter the Wisdom
8. Of Divinity

Mystic Circle was the fourth act which I more or less skipped, dosing off a bit and eating something. I can’t really understand how a completely boring bunch of poseurs like this can keep on going.

From the US they had brought Incantation, who recently released another album of their brutal death metal. They found their own kind of niche, which lots of dissonance mixed in their brutal riffs and mixing that with really slow sections. Their show started with a rather long sample of the “Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn” movie. This band played a mixture of songs from nearly all their albums, including “Golgotha” of their debut, “Ibex Moon”, “Impending Diabolical Conquest”, “Dying Divinity”. Unfortunately, they didn’t fill their time slot complety and quit after about half an hour.

After a tour with Bolt Thrower last year, Malevolent Creation were back on the European continent again. This time they brought drummer Dave Culross, which immediately made them a lot more aggressive then they were on the aforementioned tour last year. Nevertheless I couldn’t really get into the music much – it wasn’t bad, but just not my thing.

The headliner this evening were the Greek band Rotting Christ, promoting their latest album “Theogonia”. Now I really enjoy their debut album “Thy Mighty Contract”, but with every release since they departed further from their black metal roots, and I find their last couple of albums really boring. However, live this band is a lot more powerful than on CD. And so this was much more enjoyable than I had expected, probably because they left out most of the cheesy electronics stuff and such . They included songs from various albums in their set, like “King of a Stellar War”, “Sanctus Diavolos”. As an encore they played “Non Serviam” off the album of the same name. Unfortunately they forgot to play anything of their debut, not even the short “The Sign of Evil Existence”.