On a drizzly Sunday evening, the Birmingham grinders of Napalm Death, played a gig in the city of Haarlem. The band has been around for 25 years already, so it is quite clear what to expect from them. This time they brought two support.

To kick off the evening the Glasgow band Mendeed were brought along. These young guys play a mixture of death metal and metalcore, which is rather dull. There were some interesting lead guitar moments and the drums were decent, but that’s about all I have to say about them.

Second support was even more boring, namely the Dutch hardcore band Born From Pain.

Then at last it was time for Napalm death. The band mostly focused on their last three albums Order of the Leech, The Code is Red, long live the Code and Smear Campaign, mixing it with some older material. The sound overall was decent, but somewhat thin on guitars and the bass drums were too loud in the mix, which is particularly annoying during blast beats, which are abundant in their music. Barney ranted his political message quite a few times between songs. The regular set was ended with the five songs of their first album, “Scum”, “Life?”, “The Kill”, “Deceiver” and the evershort “You Suffer”. And afterward returning for two more songs: the unavoidable Dead Kennedys cover “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” that they have played live ever since 1994 or so on nearly all their gigs and of course “Siege of Power”. Although a good show, it lacks a bit in classic songs, like “The World Keeps Turning”, “Instinct of Surival” or “Mass Appeal Madness” and it seemed that Danny had a bit of a bad day, making a few mistakes and looking a bit tired. Nevertheless a worthy way to spend a sunday evening.