The US death metal band Immolation frequently tour in Europe and I have seen them several times before, even though it has been a while. They released a new album “Atonement” last year and are touring now for a second leg in Europe to promote that album. They brought three bands to support them on this tour.

The opening band was a Swiss blackened death metal band called Stortregn (meaning pouring rain in German) along the line of Dissection mostly. Yet never nearly as good. Looking at their discography they have already released four album, but I hadn’t heard of them before. Pretty descent, but not very original music. Not a bad opening band really.

I was a little interested in the second band, as they had some one in the band who played in the cult act Miasma, but no one on any of their releases or so it seems. The Austria / French Monument of Misanthropy doesn’t sound one bit like them however. This is pretty much run-off-the-mill brutal death metal. Decently played, but it bores me rather quickly.

And then it only got worse, as the US Full of Hell took the stage. These guys play grindcore with some electronics thrown in the mix. The vocals are pretty much over the top. Most of the guitar riffs are quite forgettable during the songs that all last between 1 and 2 minutes. Some of the drum work was quite interesting though. They didn’t last the 50 minutes they got. But the 30 minutes or so were more than enough.

Then it was finally time for Immolation. These guys are going on for some 30 years now. But their gigs are still as powerful as ever. They have a new rhythm guitarist these days. And he plays all the songs just fine. The set obviously contained a lot of new songs. And these songs blend it quite well with the older material. They haven’t changed much stylewise. The rest of the set consists of selection of previous albums with excellent performances of Once Ordained, Father You’re not a Father, majesty and Decay, Swarm of Terror. Den of Thieves was selected of the EP from a couple of years back. And from the debut Into Everlasting Fire and obviously Immolation. The final song was the title track of the 4th album, Close to a World Below. As always they played very tightly with little time to waste on chatting between songs. Robert Vigna’s lively stage act remains an eyecatcher, but he should have washed his shirt.