Two bands were celebrating this afternoon gig on a warm Sunday in Tilburg. Acrostichon exists 30 for 30 years, although they have been inactive for some time and their latest new material is from the 90s. Their debut album is still one of the best Dutch death metal albums. And Pentacle who also existed for some 30 years held the release party at this show. The venue was sold out.

Pentacle were already playing as I entered the venue. Surprisingly the gig started on time which is an anomaly in this venue. Never the less I didn’t mind it that much as I never was a huge fan. The band plays death metal with some black and thrash influences. It’s very solid but I guess I don’t really like their riff style much.

Now Acrostichon is a whole story. Dutch death metal with many great riffs, excellent drumming and presumably one of the first female fronted death metal bands. Corinne sounds as brutal though as grunt should be. Contrary to here vocals, her song announcements were a bit incoherent. They played a longer set than earlier this year and included material from all their releases. They started with the opener of the first album Immolation of the Agnostic. The material of their second album and accompanying EP is a bit odd here and there with clean vocals and strange riffs. Snapshot was the second song on the set. With Walker of Worlds and Dehumanized followed two more awesome songs. They played nearly the entire debut album except for Havoc and three songs of Sentenced. The encore was in the form of the oddest song of the Forgotten EP, called Monsters. Great band, great gig.