This last week I had to move all of a sudden, so I was dead tired, but nevertheless, this Sunday had two interesting things. First there was a metal market in the Baroeg, which I checked out and got me a couple of new CDs. Second, there was Mortician, supported by Ackercocke and Blood Red Throne playing in Dordrecht. A bit late, the Norwegian Blood Red Thone kicked off the evening with a pretty straight-forward death metal gig. I wasn’t really familiar with the band, so I had little expectations, but some curiosity, as I heard some good things about them. The band didn’t appear to be very enthusiastic and probably as a result didn’t get much response from the audience. I thought they were okay, maybe I’ll check out their albums later.

The second band of the evening was Akercocke, which was the reason I wanted to go. This sorta Blackish death metal band appealled to me a lot on their albums (just got their latest on the metal market, and bought their debut at the gig, I had Choronzon, and Goat of Mendes already). I heard that the band played in suits before as their are shown on many photographs, but this evening they only wear buttoned shirts over jeans. Not that that is much of importance. They kicked with a couple of older songs (Justine, Of Menstrual Blood and Semen), followed by a few new songs mixed with songs of Choronzon, including the Son of the Morning, Becoming the Adversary and Enraptured By Evil. The band appeared enthusiatic and played a tight set, despite some trouble with the drums. All in all a fine gig.

Top of the bil, this night were Mortician. The US band that plays brutal death metal, on albums accompanied by a drum computer and mixes their songs with samples from horror movies. Their albums never appealed to me much, because songs sound very similar and the sound is typically very muddy. Well, except their two EPs, House by the Cemetary and Zombie Apocalypse. Now, live they play with a real drummer, which makes it already a lot better, and this time their sound was even quite clear (the highly distorted bass was even quite clear). The vocals on the other hand were as hard to understand as ever. Like on their albums, they mixed their set with horror movie samples, which make the songs recognisable. Playing for nearly an hour, they played a mixed set of old and newer songs, including Zombie Apocalypse, Driller Killer, Re-animator, Chainsaw Dismemberment, World Damnation and Blown To Pieces. Not a bad show, but musically rather dull, and samish.

So Akercocke was worth the trip to Dordrecht and BRT and Mortician were okay – but if Akercocke hadn’t played I would’ve stayed home, especially as I was really tired.