This is the second gig in this weekend that I went, although a little closer to home. Artillery’s third album By Inheritance is one of my favourite thrash metal albums ever. Unfortunately, none of their later albums even manage to come close. They are on a co-headlining tour with Mystic Prophecy (I had never even heard of them), where the latter headlines all the gigs in Germany and Artillery the remainder.

But first there was a third support band, that I skipped largely, as I am not interested in power metal at all. The Belgian FireForce which they call combat metal. To me it sounds cheesy with all the sing along choruses and all. I guess this can be called a Sabaton clone act.

Much of the same can be said of Mystic Prophecy. More cheesy easy-listeing power metal with non-existent riffing, mediocre vocals and a sing-along chorus in all the songs. Very formulaic and completely boring. It probably works well on some German festivals where every one is drunk or high or both.

Then finally it was time for Artillery. It seemed that most of the audience, which were very few anyway disagreed with me and left early. Only some 20 stayed to watch Artillery. It didn’t seem to bother the band too much. Apart from one of the Stutzer brothers no originally members were present in this lineup. They opened up with some newer songs. However the older songs that filled most of the second half of the set, sounded a lot better. By Inheritance, Deeds of Darkness, Khomaniac, The Almighty, Terror Squad, The Challenge are all awesome thrash songs. The vocalist seems to have some troubles with his voice as he could reach the high notes at all. Otherwise the band sounded quite good. They should get try to get Flemming Rönsdorf he has a much better voice, than the rather high pitch vocals of Michael Bastholm Dahl. So an solid gig, but the last time I saw them a few years back, it was a lot better.