The first gig of the year for me is the album release show of Apophys is the Hedon club, not all that close by, but I could combine it with some family visits. Even though all three bands on the bill are more or less local bands, they drew quite some crowd. So Hedon’s small hall was reasonably full. And of course we are in the northern parts of the country, so there is actually some one on wooden shoes.

The opening band is as local as can be. Zwolle’s Carnal Leftovers had the honour to open the evening. Their band name is as original as the music, a mix between Swedish death metal and Floridian death metal. Well add some tongue-in-cheek titles and lyrics, and some polka beats and you get Carnal Leftovers. A pretty good warm-up band, but a little too bland to be really good.

The second band I had never heard of before, not even by name. Shinigami is a relatively new Dutch band but with veteran musicians. Not surprisingly given the band name, their main theme is Eastern and not only Japanese. They opened their set by an intro followed by a electric cello player, a bit weird perhaps. After a couple of minutes she went off stage and the band came on. They play mostly death metal oriented music, with some thrash bits thrown in. Some of the melodies are hinting a bit towards Death. An energetic set, that got carried over to the audience quite well, leading to a very good response, including a mosh pit.

The headliner was the aforementioned Apohpys who were about to release their second album, a couple of days after the gig. But they had it already on sale at the gig. I was a pretty huge fan of Toxocara, and as that band split, Apophys seems to rise from their ashes. Musically they sound a bit more modern; and thematically, war has been replaced by sci-fi themes. I wasn’t all that impressed by the gig a couple of years ago in the Baroeg, not quite sure why. But this evening it all seemed a bit tighter, a bit more aggression. The set was a mixture of songs from the first and new album. The new songs sound not all that different from, mostly fast death metal, with some moments of rest. A pretty good gig actually to start 2018.