I’m not a huge Nile fan, and I only have their first album. And I have only seen them live once before as a support act. But a headline tour with Terrorizer as well is an interesting package to check out live, and Leiden is really nearby even though I took the car instead of the bike due to bad weather.

Opening act of the evering was the Norwegian Art Of Deception. This young band plays melodic death metal. It lacks a bit in the originality department when it comes to songwriting. It leans more to the Swedish sound than the ofter odd death metal I am used to from Norway. But never the less an entertaining band who play quite well.

I had seen the Greek band Exarsis about half a year ago on tour with Onslaugh and Artillery. They play thrash metal and like nearly all thrash revival metal, they play fast, lots of cool riffs, lots of energy on stage, but every song quickly sounds like the previous. None of these bands bring anything new to the table. It sounds good, but it has been done lots of times before.

Then Terrorizer. I half expected them to play mostly songs from World Downfall, the classic death grind album from the 1980s. They indeed started with Need to Live. Followed by two songs of Horror of the Zombies, and even two new songs from a album yet to be recorded. Sort-of-legendary drummer Pete Sandoval was playing quite well, seemed to have fun on stage, making comical faces during all his fills. It was pretty cool seeing him play from so close by. Weirdly enough only one of his bass drums had a speaker and he wasn’t playing a twin-pedal. Guitarist Lee Harrison however seemed to be a bit disinterested even though he played okay. And his mood improved a bit during the set, despite some technical problems Sam Molina’s vocals were not all to far of from Oscar Garcia’s original vocals and the bass was solid. Well it was time for Crematorium – one of their oldest songs – then the remainder of the set was filled with World Downfall tracks, including Dead Shall Rise and World Downfall at the end. Great gig though.

Nile play highly technical and original death metal, generally at a high speeds. I never could get much into them, I’m not sure why. Maybe the riffs are too abstract. The first song they played I actually new Ramses Bringer of War. Their debut album was even featured with two more songs. Their technical proficiency is undisputed, and they played very tightly, yet probably to a click track, with all the samples of Egyptian music thrown in. Good gig though.