Apparently this was the first “metal night” at the new Popcentrale in Dordrecht. Two Dutch metal bands from a time long ago and that had reformed were playing. Particularly Dissect interested me a lot as I really like their debut album Swallow Swouming Mass. And I never had a chance to see them.I also skipped or missed a couple of the festival appearances they did earlier this year.

The actual opening act had cancelled and was replaced by Panoptikon. I had never heard of them. But it appears to be a young groovy thrash / death metal. And they are really dull. There are practically no interesting riffs, the vocals are bland, the drums quite basic, and then there was some bass too.

Obtruncation is a pretty obscure band from the past that apart from a couple of demos released only a single album in the 90s. Apparently their drummer was late, since the band was practically done setting up the guitars and the drumkit was still untouched, but eventually he arrived and set up the kit. I was quite impressed by them. The play a quite technical, fast death metal with quite some original riffs and song structures. All the material is pretty old but doesn’t sound dated at all. Too bad they didn’t bring any merchandise.

The last band already of the evening was Dissect. Even though of the band that did the sole album only singer, guitarist Vincent Scheerman is in the band now after they reformed. They were plagued by sound issues, beeps, hisses, and hums throughout the gig. Not to bad but annoying, whereas the sound of Obtruncation was actually quite good. Never mind though, after the intro started it was old school death metal all the way through. Pretty simple basically, but the song really stick. Nearly the entire Swallow Swouming Mass was played. Even the embarrassingly bad lyrics were present (“Go yourself kill” and I never really found out what Swouming is anyway). They added a new song to the set, so possibly there will be a new album in the future. And there was a cover of Grave (“In Love”). So pretty awesome to finally see this band live, 20 years after I got their album.