The tenth edition of Neurotic Death Fest, held once again in Tilburg for three days. I only went to the second day as most of the bands the other days didn’t interest me.

The first band I wanted to see was US Necrophagia. That’s old school US death from way back. Although I never listened to them much, I wanted to check them out anyway, with my expectations low. I guess that was justified as their music is pretty straight forward. And when it comes to as old school as those guys are there are quite some bands that are a lot better.

So I skipped the last couple of songs to go to Tribulation who I saw only just a month or so ago in the same town. The small hall where they played was quite full. And once again there modern death metal with progressive elements was well received. Quite an interesting band really, that made quite a style change since their debut. Pretty good gig I must say.

In the much larger main hall

Pig Destroyer was playing, but their grind bored the hell out of me. So I went for a bit of food. And caught a few notes from Wormed when I came back. Never liked them pig squeals much tho.

Immolation is always a really good live band, and I’ve seen them quite a few times. This time they were just as impressive as always, with many new songs on their set. These songs sound quite good so I expect the forthcoming album to be very good. Halfway through their set, they had to include 2 minutes of silence due to the national commemoration of WWII victims, which happens on the 4th of May here. It feels a bit odd though. Anyway they continued their set just the same. I had to leave a bit early tho. So hopefully they’ll come back for a European tour in a couple of months

The reason to leave early was Vallenfyre who were set to play in the small hall. This is basically a side project of Paradise Lost’s Gregor who handles the vocals with an odd bunch of guys handling the music. This was only their sixth gig ever since and I don’t expect them to do a lot of touring considering all the other bands the member are in. Basically this is Swedish sounding death metal, but at times slowed down a lot to a more doomy style like Asphyx does. I must say it was really an excellent gig, Gregor was really chatty and after the first song the vocal sound was fixed so it all sounded grand. And they announced a new album to be recorded at the end of the year.

Back in the main hall Repulsion was playing – a classic grindcore band. But somehow their performance was much less than impressive. The bass was really distorted which I don’t like much and their was only one guitar. In advance I was wondering how they would fill their hour long set. They only recorded one album and an EP worth of material and they didn’t even play all of it, in stead added a bunch of covers to the set and they ended their set after some 40 minutes or so. And most of their songs start to sound samish after a while. Nevermind they played all the classics, like Radiation Sickness, Black Breath, Horrified, Maggots in your Coffin, etc.

Then it was an hour waiting for the final band. And that was no less that Carcass. After the intro played…. nothing happened. Then after a short while the intro played again and they finally came on stage, starting off with Inpropagation. Somehow they skipped the opening drum fills – don’t really understand why tho. They followed it up by more tracks of Necroticism, each introduced by the documentary intros off the album and some bizarre footage on the screens behind them and on the side. This included Incarnate Solvent Abuse, Symposium of Sickness, Carneous Cacoffiny, Lavaging Expectorate of Lysergide Composition and to conclude Corporal Jigsore Quandary. After that Buried Dreams. All played really tight although the vocals were a bit low in the mix and Bill’s solo’s weren’t all played very well. What followed were Reek of Putrefaction and Exhume to consume, Genital Grinder, This mortal Coil and Heartwork proceeded by the intro of Ruptured in Purulence. Excellent gig really; better than I expected. Hopefully the new album is just as good. They only played a bit of intro from it, so can’t say much about it.