The first concert I went to this year was headlined by a band – Deicide – I was never interested in and I hadn’t seen before either. Nevertheless I went to this gig to see the support act Psycroptic who opened. This Tasmanian outfit had recently released their third full-length and toured in support of it. The second drumset on the stage left little room for the musicians to stand, let go move around. This didn’t mind the singer much has he was quite fanatic on stage. Surprisingly, the band played no less than three songs of their debut album The Isle of Disenchantment and a single song of their second. Soundwise, there was little to complain, aside from thin guitar sound in the beginning. Psycroptic managed to work their way through an impressive set, with particularly interesting and original drum work.

The set list (not in order):

• Carnival Of Vulgarity
• The Sword Of Uncreation
• Skin Coffin
• Alpha Breed
• Merchants Of Deceit
• Epoch Of The Gods
• The Isle Of Disenchantment
• Cleansing A Misguided Path

The second band was Visceral Bleeding who are also advertised as technical, brutal death metal. I can’t say that I was very impressed by this band when I heard their albums, which are fast, samish and rather structureless. My opinion hasn’t changed at all after their live set. Lots of short blast beats and technical riffs, but they appear to be just thrown together without head or tail and don’t really form any songs.

After a long time of preparation, it was time for Deicide to take the stage. Drummer Steve Asheim was first on the stage and announced already well-know story of Glen Benton not being here. Instead of cancelling (again) they hired the help of Seth van der Loo, drummer of Severe Torture and singer of Nox and Centurian to replace Glen, i.e. only the vocals; the bass was absent. Seth got very little time to study his material so he needed lyrics sheets to help him with the 17 songs. This would be his last show with them as they had a different singer/bass player filling in for the remaining tour, so Seth threw the lyrics sheets into the audience after each song. He appeared to do quite well and the band seemed to be quite appreciative of him. But, like I said, I’ve never been much interested in Deicide and their Childish image doesn’t help either. And as such they couldn’t impress me much on stage. Most of the material sounds very similar and only the songs of the debut album stood out of the rest. Most of the crown natheless appeared to be quite enthused by them.