The Dutch Doom Day is celebrating its tenth edition with a three day event with in total 15 bands. Like usual the line-up is very varied with some bands not even all that doomy at all.The Friday opened with a band form the Azores called A Dream Of Poe who play pretty standard doom / death with some gothic touches here and there. I wasn’t all that impressed, especially the vocals were rather dull most of the time. Music-wise a bit too generic for me.The band that made me go that Friday were the reunited Spina Bifida. Excellent doom / death from the early nineties who split up after only one album (like so many bands from that time it seems) and were long forgotten afterwards. Anyway after the intro (the same one as on the album) they opened with Witchfire. Excellent sound, and the band appeared to enjoying their old material. Most of the set was comprised of songs from the album, but apparently they have been writing new songs too as one was played. It seems to sound a bit different, so we’ll just have to wait if they will record a new album and see how it turns out. They ended the set with the song called simply “Die”. Great gig.

The Friday closed with the band The 11th Hour which is mostly a solo doom metal project by former Gorefest’s drummer Ed Warby. I wasn’t really all that impressed by their album nor did they impress me live last time. The live band consists among others of another former Gorefest guy and two Pim and Bram from Officium Triste. In total three guitars, which seemed a bit overdone, since as far as I could see at least two guitars always played the same riffs. Besides material off the debut album, they played two new songs as well. Anyway, they couldn’t impress me much this time either. Even though the it was brought with lots of dedication I’m sure, I find their music rather dull and the clean vocals sound way too thin for me. And no encores were played.

 

I skipped the second day as I knew none of the bands and none sounded interesting enough to go. The third day opened with another Dutch band Abyssmal Darkening which turned out to be better than I expected judging from their album. Mostly doom/death but with harsh vocals and some black metal influences. Not bad, except that the rest of the band – two women actually on guitar respectively bass – acted like statues.

That could also be said of the next band which is a Finnish / Dutch collaboration called Night of Suicide. They play funeral doom – a very difficult genre actually as it can very easily become extremely boring. But when well composed it can be a very interesting genre – like Mournful Congregation seems to pull off. However in this case it turns out to be rather boring, not played very tightly, with aweful barking vocals and a rhythm guitarist that can do an excellent Nicholas Cage impression – ie have only one stoic facial expression.

And then there was the excellent Chilean band Procession who play classic doom inspired by bands like Candlemass now just Felipe with a couple of session members as he apparently moved to Sweden. It doesn’t matter cause this was an excellent gig with songs off the latest album (The Road to the Gravegarden, Hyperion, Destroyers of the Faith ) as well as off the EP (Raven of Disease, Like a Plague upon the Earth). Maybe this is not all that original but it simply works and they perform it quite well with very solid and powerful – clean vocals.

The fourth band this day is the German band Ophis who specialise in bleak, extremely depressive doom death. They started with “Expired Earth” off Withered Shades. Their songs are long like most doom bands, but they keep them interesting by adding interesting lead sections as well as lots of time changes sometimes reminding me of the legendary Disembowelment. Off the debut they played “Beneath Sardonic Skies” which was followed by a new song to appear on a split with Officium Triste, which appeared a bit shorter and overall faster. They ended the set with the 15 minute long, opening track of the latest album called “The Halls of Sorrow”. Excellent band, excellent gig.

Herder was next – promoted as a stoner doom band, but it seemed a bit fast for that to me as well is the screaming vocals didn’t seem to fit. I didn’t care much about them so I left, skipping the headliner all together – The Devil’s Blood – for whom I couldn’t care less either. Call me conservative but I don’t see what this band has to do at doom festival. So like most of these editions a bit of a so-so festival with a couple of really good performances but also many disappointments and not all that well attended. It always strikes me as odd that there has rarely been a very strong headliner at this festival. but we’ll see what next year will bring.