As Dismember is always a very enjoyable live band, and they are touring Europe again, it was time for me to check out their gig at the Baroeg in Rotterdam. They brought three bands to accompany them this time.

Although the Baroeg website claimed differently, the opening band of the night was Infernal Poetry from Italy. It has been quite a long time since I saw them, and frankly I don’t remember much of that gig, except their cover of Death’s “Without Judgement”. And I don’t think I’ll remember much of this gig either in a while as it didn’t really kept my attention. The band is leaping from one crazy riff to another, and once they get going in a steady death metal riff and I was just getting the hang of it, they break into another freakish riff. They concluded their set with a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Fear of the Dark”, that was reasonably good.

After a quick change, Requiem took the stage. This Swiss band were announced as a technical death metal band. Yet I have to disagree with that statement; they weren’t technical at all – in fact pretty straight-forward brutal death metal. However, it was executed quite well and for a couple of songs it was quite interesting, but then it started to become repetitive and sameish.

Debauchery are a German death metal band, who play a pretty straight-forward kind of mid-paced death metal with a gore image of the likes of Mortician or Cannibal Corpse. Emphasising that, they collectively took a blood bath before playing. Now I never thought that these theatrics add anything, in fact imo it’s quite ridiculous. So consequently I didn’t regard this band highly and I didn’t enjoy their show much.

Dismember made themselves guilty of a similar crime in the past, on the picture on their debut album – the mighty “Like an Everflowing Stream”, but at least they make interesting music. And that showed this night. Their set consisted of songs of most albums. Starting of with “Fleshless”, set the right mood for the gig, despite the trouble with the faulty mic. Once that was replaced, the band continued to play tight, with songs like “Where Iron Crosses Grow”, “Skin her Alive”, “Soon to be Dead”, “Casket Garden”, “Trendkiller”, and a few tracks of the new album. The biggest surprises for me was the inclusion of “Pieces” and the sole encore “Of Fire”. Leaving out some classics, like “Skin Father”, “Override of the Overture”, “Dismembered” are pitiful but forgiveable. A great band and a great gig it was.