Demilich are Finnish death metal band from the early 1990s. They play a rather oddball kind of death metal with peculiar, but technical riffs and extremely low guttural vocals. I am not sure if they ever toured in support of their sole album, released in 1993. At least I never got to see them live at the time. I did have the opportunity to see them live during NDF in 2016. That was a decent but not a great gig. Now in 2022 they did an actual European tour with one stop in the Netherlands, on a drowsy Wednesday evening.

The Dutch Deathless Void had the honour to open the gig and were added to the package by the club. They played a short set – much shorter than the time schedule would allow – not all that surprising as they only have one 3-song demo out. In essence this was black metal, with some atmospheric parts thrown in. It was kind of decent. The first song was full speed with very dense drumming. Not entirely an interesting band to me.

Concrete Winds are a Finnish death grind band and were on tour with Demilich. They were actually quite good. Sometimes it was a bit faster Motorhead, sometimes they reminded me of Lock-up and a touch of Discharge. Fast and short songs was the deal here and it worked. It was raw, fast and abrasive with some complex riffing with occasional lead guitar work. The drums were taking a bit of a back seat. And there wasn’t a bass player. Pretty cool gig actually.

Then it was time for Demilich. Unlike the last time, Antti managed to keep all his limbs functional this time, so he was actually playing guitar and singing unlike the previous time I saw them, when he had broken an arm and they had a stand-in guitar player. And apart from the bass-player, it was the line-up from the album. The don’t have that many songs as they only got to release on album, and a couple of demos. A few songs got recorded for a re-issue of Nespithe but were already written in the 90s. Musically the riffing is kind of weird and very much unlike any other bands. Yet most of the music is quite catchy and certainly very recognisable. Also the titles are very weird and long. Inherited Bowel Levitation – Reduced Without Any Effort was the opening track. And it sounded actually very good. And Antti’s vocals very nearly as low as on the album. In between songs, Antti was making lots of – mostly cheesy – jokes, while tuning. They played nearly the entire Nespithe album with Emptiness of Vanishing and a few demo tracks. The set closers were the When the Sun Drank the Weight of Water, Raped Embalmed Beauty Sleep , and The Echo. Actually a really good gig from this Finnish cult death metal band.