Diamond Head is a band I guess most people got to know through the cover versions Metallica did. They nearly covered the entire Lightning to the Nations album throughout their career. Where Am I Evil? is probably the best known song. And so I am one of those. I only listened to the originals much much later. And now Diamond Head played in the Baroeg on a Sunday evening. I didn’t really know what to expect here. I skipped the first two opening acts as they were mostly traditional heavy metal bands I never heard of.

When I entered the venue the third and last support act was just starting: the Dutch heavy metal band Martyr. They are already around form some 30 years as well. They seem to have a small fan base that seem to follow their gigs. Musically, I couldn’t care much for it. Basically plain heavy metal with okay-ish vocals and mediocre riffs. After a song or two it pretty much started to bore me. The singer (I think) also brought his 10 year old (or so I guess) daughter on stage for the first and last song in corpse paint like make-up. Sounds like a bad idea.

It took them quite a while to set up, but they really changed nearly all equipment on stage. So after some 45 minutes it was finally time for the NWOBHM band Diamond Head. They started, strangely enough with a song from their last album before the break-up, quickly followed by the title track of their second album. They sounded really great, played real tight and a lot of enthusiasm in every one in the band. The new vocalist doesn’t sound very different from the original singer. Some newer songs like Diamonds or Bones got mixed in with mostly the classic songs of the first album: The Prince, It’s Electric, Helpless and of course Am I Evil? to close the set. And yeah there is quite a different feel to these songs when compared to the covers apart from the solid drumming and better guitar soloing. And for an encore they came back for Sucking My Love. Actually a really great gig, for band that should have been far greater than they are.