The 11th instance of the Neuratic death Fest started on Friday May 2 18.00 , so I travelled through rush hour to Tilburg for ten bands to appear.

The opening band of the festival was the old school death metal band Deceased from the US, playing in the large hall. I never followed them much really, so I only knew one song from a compilation. They actually played The Triangle as well. They played half an hour, and that was pretty much okay. Nothing really special.

The next band was the sort of semi-legendary Dutch death metal band Antropomorphia in the small venue. Oddly enough they opened with a Death cover – Open Casket. Which wasn’t particularly interesting. The rest of their set consisted of six of their own songs, starting with the old Crack the Casket and mostly newer songs. Quite a decent gig.

Back in the large venue Aborted played, whom I don’t really like much. But they are an excellent live band and have a couple of really good guitar players. I went through some merchandise booths most of their set though.

Then the Czech Spasm played in the small hall. Some seem to call this discogrind. Which seems kind of appropriate. The singer wore a mankini and a mask with a huge white dildo on his head. So you’ll probably guess the mental level of this band. The music is dead simple and quite quickly becomes very repetitive. After three or so songs – yea about five minutes – I left.

Then there was Massacre on the big stage. A few years they played in the Baroeg, but then it was the  Kam Lee version, which was really good. This was the Rick Rozz version, sharing only bassist Terry Butler with the Kam Lee version. And like their new album, it was all quite mediocre. All the songs seemed to miss any punch, have dull vocals, and the same trademark guitar wankery by Rick, which basically comes down to wanking the whammy bar a lot.

The Norwegian Kraanium is another band I only watched briefly. Their low-tuned brutal death metal is really not my thing.

Pungent Stench appeared then in the large hall, or better said, Schirenc plays Pungent Stench as Schirenc and Wank are battling in court over the name. Anyway, Martin found some other bassplayer and drummer and plays old Pungent Stench songs till up until their first breakup. A pretty decent gig but this would probably have worked a lot better in a smaller venue.

The main attraction for me on the first day of this festival were the Swedish God Macabre. They only made one EP but that is a really great album anyway. So during the fourty minutes they got they could easily play all their material, as well as some songs written during their Macabre End days, and a song that never was recorded before. It was really awesome to hear these songs performed live. The songs sound just as fresh as some 20 years ago.  Brilliant gig.

Last gig I went to was Terrorizer. I wasn’t sure which line up it would, I even don’t know how many there are anyway. But this one has two guys from Monstrosity along with Pete on drums. They played the entire World Downfall album. That was quite  cool. The songs are all pretty simple but they really have some charm and work live quite well too. But after the highlight Dead Shall Rise, it all kind of  dozed off. The cover of Death’s Infernal Death was okay and the two last songs – Crematory and Horror of the Zombies – didn’t really come across well. Pete’s foot work was also not as impressive as it used to be. The solo double bass rolls on one of the songs was quite slow and really sloppy.

I skipped Prostitute Disfigurement all together. Anyway pretty interesting first day of this festival.