The Slovakian brutal death metal band had organised a four-gig mini-tour through the Netherlands. And as they didn’t bring any supports themself, each of the four shows had different opening acts. Gouda was the fourth show on the tour. I don’t really know what their business case is but if the other three gigs had as many paying visitors (~40), it’d be quite expensive for them to do this tour.

The opening band were the Belgian death metal band Battalion, who recently released their debut album “Winter Campaign”. As such most of the songs played were taken from that album, including “Skeleton City”, “Torture Tactics” and the title track “Winter Campaign”. With a reasonably good sound, and despite some technical problem, they played a steady gig. However, they need to work a bit on their stage appearance; or perhaps this was due to their “heavy night” (of drinking?) the singer was referring to a few times. They ended their set with a cover, which I however I can’t really place, but sounds familiar. The setlist shows it as “Hard Times”.

The second band was also the second band people claim are inspired by the mighty Bolt Thrower. Where, save for their theme – war – that isn’t really all that apparent with Battalion, with the local band Warmaster it is very apparent. Some of their songs could have come straight off the “The Fourth Crusade” album, with similar riffs and drums. Nevertheless they didn’t play very tight and songs sound a bit uninspired. The worst thing of this band were the wanky guitar solos – utter crap. Somewhere half way through their set they suddenly quit after they fucked up a few times in two songs, with the drummer claiming he couldn’t hear anything but a hiss from his monitor.

Then it was time for Sanatorium – according to my own administration, I had seen these guys live 3 times before, but I can’t recall a bit what they sounded like then – I actually didn’t even recall I saw them – that much impression did they make. They play brutal death grind, like many bands do from that area. Despite their total redundancy and lack of originality as well some more technical problems, they didn’t play badly and appeared enthusiastic. After raging through their set, they were done in some 45 minutes of blasting.