I was sold out weeks before the show – they only did two shows in NL. So it took a while to get in (only reservation no pre-sale tickets) – but I was there early. The club (Baroeg) was pretty much packed.

Watain was the opening act, which is a black metal band (true I guess) who were quite boring imo. the singer was enthusiastic, and he wore a very old mayhem shirt that stuck together by the print…

And then came Dissection. After the stage was setup Jon and Set entered the stage and performed some stupid satanic ritual or whatever, with candles, champagne and large metal crosses similar to the one on the back of the CD. After a while they finally got started. The sound wasn’t really great – the guitars were a bit thin in the mix, esp Set’s who was nearly inaudible and too much drums and bass. The bass drums were triggered which didn’t make it better anyway. After the intro (the one from storm…) I expected them to start with night’s blood, but they started with black horizons.

Throughout the set I noticed quite a lot of smaller mistakes, esp from Jon. Maybe he was having a bad day or what, but lots of melodies and stuff went wrong – couple of false notes in nearly all songs. Plus it sounded to me that some of the aggression and eagerness of the albums was gone. All in all it wasn’t a bad show, but it wasn’t great. The setlist was impressive tho, altho the new song is pretty boring and wasn’t well-received by most of the audience.

setlist ( pretty much in order):

• black horizons
• frozen
• night’s blood
• soul reaper
• Maha Kali
• where dead angels lie
• retribution – storm of the lights bane
• unhallowed
• thorns of crimson death
• mistress of the bleeding sorrow
• somberlain
• elisabeth bathory

— encore–

• a land forlorn