013 in Tilburg was the venue that hosted this thrash metal festival during the carnival. While outside the parade with decorated vehicles and oddly and colourfully dressed people were gathering, inside metalheads dressed in black were awaiting the return of the mighty Onslaught with four other bands.

The opening band was the local and rather new band The New Dominion (formed in March 2006). They play a form of death metal, thrash blend that is rather simple, straightforward, with clean and grunted vocals. They aren’t boring at all and actually quite interesting, until the singer uses his clean style, which is horrible. A cover of At The Gates – “Blinded by Fear” was included in the set but not played too well.

The second band was also pretty new, the UK band Evile. Now this is a completely different cup of tea. This young band plays a fast, aggressive style of thrash, much in the vein of early Exodus, Testament, Onslaught but with sufficient originality to stay interesting. On stage these guys seem to give everything and have a lot of fun. Unfortunately they didn’t bring any merchandise, as they said it was all sold out – it leave little to wonder why, these guys simply rip.

The third band on the bill is the dutch band Flesh made Sin who also play a mixture of thrash and death metal. I’ve seen this band quite a few times before and never have they really caught my interest. Although they do play well and pretty tight, it just bores me. A cover of Necrophiliac by Slayer didn’t really grab my attention either.

The Dutch Deadhead have been around for quite a while – nearly twenty years. But what goes for Flesh Made Sin also goes for this outfit. They bore me – riffwise and other, and I can’t stand these high-pitched screech style vocals of their later albums. So this performance did little for me.

Finally it was time for the British thrash band Onslaught and the actual reason for me to go. Their appearance a year ago on one of the festivals in 013 also – but in the big hall – was very good and a gig in a small club is generally more interesting than one in a big hall. Most of the crowd were actually there for this band which was obvious as a moshpit started during the first notes of “Let There Be Death”. Running around on the stage and interacting with the crowd displayed their enthusiasm. The set was filled with classics from the first two albums including “Power From Hell”, “Metal Forces”, “Flame of the Antichrist”, “Thermonuclear Devastation”, “Angels of Death” but not the seminal “Death metal”. A short stop was made for the ill-received “In Search of Sanity” through the song “Shell Shock”. As a new album is forthcoming, the played three songs of it. I am not too sure what to think about them, they didn’t sound bad, but just couldn’t capture the spirit of old times. Nevertheless a pretty good show and it made the trip to Tilburg well-worth.