Yeah, I’m quite busy attending concerts lately. This time it was a small indoor doom metal festival in 013, Tilburg. In total seven bands took the stage. First up was the Finnish doom metal band (well all bands today are doom but hey…) Tyranny. I didn’t know them before. Playing a mere 2 songs in approximately 25 minutes, they set the mood for the afternoon and evening whilst the venue was slowly filling up. Slow is the key factory here, with melodic overtones. The band was not bad, but could do with some more variation.

Then there was a band called Planet AIDS. They can hardly be described as music, as there is apparent mostly improvised guitar and bass noise and some drum beats. Most of the performance comes from the “singer” how shouts Latin (?) lyrics. Not much interesting here anyway.

Then we got Thee Plague of Gentlemen. These Belgian doomster are more and oldschool band. Not really my favourite tho. Highlight of the set was a cover of Eternal Frost the infamous Winter.

Now stuff really started to get interesting again, as Worship was next. Formerly this project was a joined effort of a French and German guy but a couple of years ago the French half of the band comitted suicide. Now the German guy continues – having guest musicians on stage. Worship is very – very slow funeral doom metal. The music is mainly carried by the lead guitar work and the vocals creating a very depressive atmosphere. Despite some technical issues with the rhythm guitarist, this was a great performance. Unfortunately they did not bring any CDs. So I couldn’t obtain some.

Reverend Bizare was the band that keyed my interest to go to this festival. They brought no merchandise at all – so againI couldn’t buy their new album (don’t these guys wanna sell any of their stuff or what?). Anyway… They kicked off with a couple of great tracks from their debut CD In the Rectory of the Bizare Reverend, seeming quite enthusiastic all together. They finished their too short set with two tracks from their new album, ending with the song “Doom over the World” which appeared to be a crowd favourite already. The music is mostly driven by a heavy bass sound dominating the guitar sound; interesting drum work completes the music. The vocals were a bit low in the mix so they didn’t carry the dramatic perfomence as on the album; but furthermore thumbs up. At the end I managed to catch the guitarists plectrum.

Then, it was Esoteric again, who I had seen the week before in the Baroeg. Now they weren’t headlining and that showed as they were given only a mere 50 minutes instead of the 75 in Baroeg. So the set list was different but with two overlapping songs. The sound wasn’t very good either, Steve’s guitar was hard to hear. Interesting was the “complex” footwork from the guitarists… they were using them quite frequently. Nevertheless this show was pretty good.

The final band was Electric Wizard. They took a long time to set up as their drummer need to change the entire kit because he was lefthanded. A band I don’t really enjoy much so I left after a couple of songs.

In summa, the gig was definitely worth going to with Worship and Reverend Bizarre as the highlights. The downside was the lack of merchandising.