Gorguts have just started of their tour to support an album (EP) that hasn’t been released yet. Maybe a bit odd, particularly as the album wasn’t on sale at the merchbooth either. But anyway, Gorguts is a very interesting band, Obscura is a ground breaking album. They brought no less than three other bands on this tour.

The opening act was the Italian Nero Di Marte. I had never heard of them before. And the description on the 013 agenda didn’t sound too appealing. They started their gig slowly with some slow, soft drum beats and strumming, gradually increasing. Musically they are avantgarde death metal I guess, with lots of weird chords and dissonance. Some of the lyrics seem to be in Italian. However, to me it lacked structure, and the more traditional riffs, as well as aggression. I would file this more under jazz some avantgarde jazz than metal.

The second band was Dysrythmia from the USA. This band is formed by the guitarist and bassplayer of Gorguts – hence performing a double set. And it is entirely instrumental. Something that doesn’t work for me most of the time, even though I am usually not very keen on vocals. Nevertheless musically they kept it interesting. The bassplayer did some nifty doublehanded tapping on his six-string bass, much like playing on a chapman stick. The drummer basically was all over the play. Decent gig for just once, but not something I’d like to listen to at home.

Psycroptic were next. All the way down from Tasmania, Australia. I thought at first that they had a new singer, as I didn’t recognize them, but apparently he had cut his hair and is now nearly bald. Anyway the Haley brothers are an excellent combination of guitar and drums. The music is technical and brutal, but not all that fast most of the time. The melodic guitar runs in most of the songs are awesome. They played mainly newer songs, which is a bit of a shame as I like the first two albums by far the best. Not even the classic The Colour of Sleep. Nevertheless a very solid gig.

Then it was up to Gorguts, they had already announced they would play the new EP – which is one song – entirely. But they started off with two songs of the previous album. Somehow I can’t really get into it as much as Obscura or even From Wisdom to Hate. It seems more music to stand still listening to that engaging with some headbanging or moshing. As such not much of that was going on. Most of the audience just gazed at the band on stage. Then they indeed went into the thirty minutes song. Even though it was broken up in three parts with some noisy intermezzos. Still it is very long and uncommon for death metal. Stylistically, the song is close to the previous album. However quite a feat to pull off. Then they switched guitars – Luc went to a six string instead of the seven string – and bass. The remainder of the set consisted of older material, Inverted and the title track of From Wisdom to Hate and Nostalgia and Obscura off the Obscura album. To me those 4 songs were by far the most interesting and they played them flawslessly. There were no encores and no songs of the first two albums. So pretty good gig.