It was already the fourth instalment of this small festival in the Baroeg in Rotterdam, with a mixture of extreme metal bands performing on single day. Six bands were scheduled, however one band – Grindpad – cancelled shortly before the event. So everything started an hour later than planned.

The opening band was Deadspeak. A young Dutch death metal band that plays old school metal, much in the vein of bands like Death. I had seen them play a couple of weeks before in Drachten, and they actually sounded quite good then. They got some extra playing time here, so all the better. Originality doesn’t seem to be their main focus, but they have good riffs and compose good songs and they can play. A second guitarist may be good idea though. The Death cover Evil Dead was a bit unnecessary even though it was played quite well. Hopefully they will be able to release an album soon.

Onheil was up next. A Dutch band that plays catchy and very melodic heavy metal mixed with some black metal. They had a replacement drummer – which was their previous drummer – as their actual drummer was injured. The band already exists for nearly 25 years and I hadn’t heard them before. Stylistically not really my interest. But it sounded enjoyable for the 45 minutes or so they got.

Knife is a relatively new German band, who play a mix of heavy metal black metal and thrash, but very different from the previous band. This sounds more like Venom or early Bathory in many ways. Theatrically and vocally they lean more to the early black metal side, with leather and spikes, musically it sounds more like speed or heavy metal. A decent gig though but not that special at all.

The band I actually came to see was Consolation. They have resurfaced since half a year or so and I had seen them a couple of months back. They were supposed to play with 2 vocalists again, but Mano was ill, so it was just Arjan, so basically the line-up of their last album Stahlplaat. They opened with Murder, the opening track of Brave Melvin From The Southern Point and it was blistering fast, Motocation, Godmode and Killjoy. And that is basically what sums up the entire gig. Fast riffs, fast drums with a few intermezzo’s here and there, notably We Mourn of the debut. Three new songs were added to the set list, which they mentioned would appear on an EP. They sounded much in the vein of the old Consolation, so its probably going to be good. The raged for an hour which is quite long for this kind of music, ending their set with three songs of the aforementioned Brave Melvin album, Truckload of Hatred, The Truth and the odd one out with some black metal aesthetics The Darkest Black. This gig was in many was much better than the one in Zaandam.

The last band was Wiegedood – a Belgian band, the band name is Dutch for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. They play some from of modern black metal. It sounds quite repetitive and uses dissonant melodies. Maybe it is quite unique, it not really something enjoy.