The second gig I went to in one weekend. This time mostly old school death metal. But first some modern metal in the form of The Amenta who had just started playing when I entered the venue. This Australian band plays a blackish death metal with industrial influences. I didn’t know them beforehand, but they sounded interesting. Worth checking out later.

The changeover went pretty quick as Dave Haley plays in both The Amenta as well as Psycroptic. These Tasmanians play a very distinct style of technical death metal. With only one guitar the sound is sometimes a bit thin, but mostly the bass fills in most of the gaps. The set list focussed mostly on the new album. But there was room for some older stuff as well. Great gig, they deserve a spot higher up the bill so they got more time to play.

Then there was Macabre. A band I have probably seen too often as their live shows are getting old. The set list was pretty much the same as last year in Tilburg, with the same songs of Dahmer and Sinister Slaughter that they have played for the last 10 years or so. Funnily though they played Fritz Haarmann Der Metzgler again this time but a lot faster than that I recall they recorded on Murder Metal. The Venom cover was pretty redundant and would much better have been replaced by a classic song, like Ed Gein, or Serial Killer. The mighty Gloom / Grim Reality albums were skipped entirely. Not a bad gig but not too interesting either. Macabre seems to get stuck in their own small niche.

Finally there was a band I had seen last in 1994, and I mostly lost sight of them. Obituary seem to have written all their great songs in a very brief time before recording their debug, and have been reiterating the same old riffs over and over again for the remainder of their discography. Nevertheless they promised to play a set consisting of only the first 3 albums and so that was at least a good opportunity to check them out again. And they delivered what they promised. They started off with songs of Slowly we Rot in quick succession, followed by songs of Cause of Death and then The End Complete. The band nevertheless seemed a bit uninterested, Trevor brought a laptop to watch some American Football gig, but apparently John thought it was annoying and wanted it turned off. John’s voice wasn’t as powerful by far as on the Cause of Death album, or was that just all effects? Anyway, decent gig. I’ll probably watch them in another 15 years or so – if they are still around. They managed to squeeze out two songs as encore, I’m In Pain and the mandatory Slowly We Rot. Strangely though they left out Find The Arise.