Chilean progressive doom/death metal band Mar de Grises were doing some festival gigs in Europe, and were doing some gigs in between. This Wednesday evening they played a headlining gig in the cafe Little Devil in Tilburg (without an entrance fee) – a place I had never been before really. I guess it won’t be that often that a band like this would play a headlining gig in Europe all too soon. So a great opportunity to see them play a 75 minute set in stead of a 40 minute set. Two support slots were added.

The first band of the evening was the local, but reasonably well-established band Faal with one album under their belt. They were about to start when I entered the venue. Faal (Dutch for fail) plays a modernised version of doom/death with some funeral touches as well as some black metal influences. The sound was remarkably good – which continued to be so for the entire evening. They played a two songs of their album (00:00 and Perpetual Solitude) as well as a two new songs (The Tempest and one which title I forgot). The only thing that really bothered me were the really untight double bass parts even though there were few. Other than that a fine performance and a very interesting gig.

From Belgium came the band Thurisaz who seem to play a mixture of various styles, including death, power, thrash and half a dozen or so more styles of metal. I had never heard of them before but they already released 3 albums. The music was basically okay – varied, tight – but the added keyboards were annoying and added little to the music. The clean vocals at times were terrible and often didn’t fit the musical style too well.

Then there was Mar De Grises whose last tour I missed. Their keyboardist and singer could apparently not make the trip so the old singer returned. The keyboards were left behind – which actually is an improvement imo. The quite complex music was played very tightly by five guys that really seemed to enjoy playing. Naturally they played a couple of songs of their latest album, such as opening track Starmaker but they frequently returned to their debut album as well which I think is still their best album. And they concluded their set with the very epic To See Saturn Fall with the classic break in the middle where they just let all the instruments wander into chaos for a while, then stop and they continue with an awesome melodic guitar line. Definitely one of the best gigs I went to this year.

• Starmaker
• El Otro
• Shining Human Skin
• The Bell And The Solar Gust
• One Possessed
• A Sea of Dead Comets
• Sleep Just One Dawn (was on the set list but they didn’t play it)
• Recklessness
• To See Saturn Fall