I think the third instalment of this doom metal festival in Dordrecht, at the new location of Bibelot. Anyway I skipped most of the early bands, as they weren’t very interesting and I was (still am) a bit ill. So I entered the venue after the 11th hour had just finished playing. A band I don’t care for and seen a few days earlier with the mighty Mournful Congregation.

The first band for me was the Portuguese Desire who play slow, melodic doom with some gothic touches. I saw them before in 2003 or so but never really followed up on that gig, so I barely know any of their material. Never the less it was a quite enjoyable set, well played and quite varied. So I am quite impressed, too bad tho that their albums are very hard to find.

The next band was Jack Frost an Austrian band I had seen a few times before but failed to impress me. And the same occurred this time, their hour long set was quite boring the singer sounds pretty terrible, and despite their discography of 6 or so albums they managed to play two cover songs – Duran Duran and John Denver.

The headliner of this year was Mourning Beloveth. I still rate their second album – The Sullen Sulcus – as one of the best doom / death albums recorded. A quality they however never managed to attain on later albums, although those are some fine albums as well. They opened up with a song of their latest album Formless, but the intro was hurt a bit by the sloppy playing of lead guitarist Frank (and no Frank it is not your amp!). The rest of the band are rock solid as ever. Overall a pretty decent gig despite the flaws and an interesting setlist, skipping only the Disease for the Ages album.