The second gig this weekend, a Sunday Metal Matinee at the Baroeg. After some grind on the Friday, Immolation was back in Europe to play some technical death metal.

The opening band was the young French band Chabtan. I wasn’t familiar with them and apparently they have released only one EP. It sounded okay, really. No big surprises here for a death metal band.

The second support act is another young French band called Sweetest Devilry. Weird band name really. I hadn’t heard either and as far as I could find out haven’t released anything yet. They had some trouble apparently with the samples the drummer was supposed to start. So they ended up doing without. They were advertised as melodic death metal, but with quite some technical guitar work. That seems to drown the music a bit as the songs lack flow and indentity. Otherwise not a bad gig.

Then the reformed Broken Hope were getting on stage. I never really liked them much as they are quite redundant US death metal, combining leftover Obituary riffs with leftover Suffocation riffs. None of their albums have left any lasting marks in the past and I doubt that their new material will. So a couple of nice riffs but other than that a quite boring gig.

Then finally the mighty Immolation. I’ve seen them quite a few times and they were always good. The started with the title track of their latest album, and quickly followed with a couple more songs without break. They at last replaced the older songs they always played with a couple of others: Despondent Souls, Nailed to Gold and the brilliant Those Left Behind. Although it seems they play them somewhat faster than on the albums. Other than that the set was comprised of a mixture of songs from all the albums, except Failures for Gods. That is really the only smudge on this preformance apart from a couple of minor mistakes. As always Immolation manage to deliver a great set. Also they finally brought the Provindence EP for sale, to make  my collection complete again.