Over the years, I have seen Officium Triste quite a few times. Quite solid doom death metal. They have now been around 25 years, albeit they broke up for a small period after the first album. An anniversary gig was scheduled in the Baroeg, where they have played very often.

The opening act was Kurb Saatus who started around the same time, and shared one of the first gigs with Officium Triste. They just released or will release their debut album this year. So they take things slow. Musically it is mostly mid-paced melodic death metal. Not the most interesting band. The music is kind of run-of-the-mill. Not bad but it just doesn’t do much for me.

Officium Triste already announced that they would play a double set. They opened up with a Your Fall From Grace off their latest album and a new song. During this set they invited their first player to join them on stage for two songs, including the old Stardust song. During the break, a tribute band took the stage consisting of people who have had a long involvement with the band, called the Hoppy Forest, as a surprise act. And they performed the song The Happy Forest. A bit sloppy, really, but never the less fun to watch. The second set started with a new song, never played live before, called the end is Nigh. Some more rarely played songs were included like Lonesome and the demo track Mountains of Depressiveness. Their previeous guitar player Bram joined them for two songs namely an Editors cover and Like Atlas off their latest album. My Charcoal heart was the encore. I missed Roses on My Grave, as this was the first song they released after their come-back, and they haven’t played it in ages. In total they played more than 2 hours with a couple of songs that weren’t play live for quite a while and a couple of guests returning temporarily to the band. Couple of mistakes here and there but all in all a very entertaining gig.

There was still one band to go, to play as a sort of after party. Phlebotomized had that honour. It’s been only a couple of weeks since I saw them at NDF. Tom Palms still isn’t playing guitar so a student of his is standing in still. They practically played the same set, but in a slightly different order. Ben’s clean vocals are still terrible, but other than that the performance was tighter than in Tilburg. As an encore they played My Dear… with Tom Palms joining them on stage to do vocals together with Ben. Interesting gig.