The Irish lads from Mourning Beloveth were doing a short tour in the Benelux during this weekend around a festival in Leeuwarden. The second gig was in Rotterdam and the third in Belgium, however that gig was cancelled. So a really short tour then. Originally the Dutch underground act Phlebotomized were supposed to play, however the guitarist was injured somehow and couldn’t play. Their singer Ben de Graaff however is involved with many other bands, so a replacement was quickly found. I guess this last-minute replacement dropped the turnout quite a bit.

Facade are a Dutch doom / death metal band fronted by Ben as well. They have not released much material other than a self-released album and a demo in their seven years of existence. They have three guitarist, yet musically it isn’t all that complexly layered as e.g. Esoteric or Mournful Congregation. And their songwriting isn’t up to par with these bands either. Most of the material is run-of-the-mill. And oOne of their guitarists needs to work on his hammer-ons and pull-off as they sounded weak. Ben’s vocals seem a bit overdone for this style of music and would probably better fit a brutal death metal band. Not bad, but not really all that interesting either.

Then it was time for Mourning Beloveth. They even set-up quite quickly and started a bit earlier than scheduled. The Words that Crawled was the first song, from their second album The Sullen Sulcus. That is pretty awesome as that is by far their best album. With their later albums, they never came close to neither sound nor songwriting. From their debut album they played The Mountains are Mine. The remainder of the set was dedicated to their latest album and the EP succeeding it. Frank’s lead guitar playing is a bit off some times as he misses more notes than he is supposed to and his false notes stand out in he melodies; more practice may help. The rest of the band is steady as a rock tho. So quite a solid gig, really.