One of the oldest death metal bands was playing the Baroeg on this still cold Friday in April. They didn’t bring any supports on this European tour, so two (more or less) local bands were opening.

The first band was already playing when I entered the venue; that’s one of the major downsides of starting gigs early, I’d have to travel during rush hour, so there was still quite a lot of traffic on the road. Anyway Xerpentor featuring Philip van Nugteren on guitar – once upon a long time ago of the mighty Dissect – were playing their pretty fast death metal. Most of the songs sounded a bit similar. I didn’t know the band before though so that probably didn’t help. Nor did the muddy tone. They ended their gig with a cover version Clangor of War by Massacre which was okay.

A hard-working relatively new band is Entrapment. After a short intro from tape, things start to become clear immediately. These guys play old school death metal not much unlike many of the classic Swedish bands like Nihilist, Dismember, Carnage and so on, although the guitar tone is a bit cleaner than the expected chainsaw sound. But if the music doesn’t give it away, the Dismember like logo does, or the artwork of the demos that reminds a lot of the Nihilist demos. Most of the songs are quite compact and mostly around the 3 minute mark. Albeit not all that original, this isn’t a direct copycat. And with solid song writing, that all makes it quite enjoyable. Set wise they played a mixture of songs of their various releases – which is one full length and some demos.

Of course Master is Master and so they start off with Master. I think this time was the first time I saw them headlining actually. Master always seems a bit under appreciated and yeah there are better bands from the early days. But their first two albums are classic but I can’t say I have really followed these guys ever since – listened to their newer albums a bit on spotify and they sound pretty much okay. The turnout this evening was quite good nevertheless. The bass sounds very heavy in the mix, even louder that the guitar which drowns out the guitar sound a bit at times, but overall the sound is quite good. Paul’s vocals sounded vile as ever. And so was his reaction to some one yelling the obligatory “Slayer”. Anyway a very varied set with new songs of the last couple of albums, as well as many older songs, although mostly the usual: Funeral Bitch, Submerged in Sin, Judgement of Will, and the obligatory set closer Pay to Die. But also the surprise Cut Through the Filth which was only released on compilation album in the early nineties. It would be cool though if Paul would dust off songs like What Kind of God, Latitudinarian, or Used. The drummer pulled off a drum solo near the end of the set, which turned out not too interesting though.