After having missed their performance at the Incubate festival the previous month, I was keen on getting to the venue on time to see the Norwegian doomers of Syrach play. Overall their dark metallic doom held little variation, yet their sound was quite dynamic. A lot of black metal riffing and the interaction between the two guitars made it interesting to listen to these guys, yet a monotonous vocalist that was amplified to loud in the venue kind of killed the mood for me. Maybe next time. (DemonDust)

Unwillingly I have seen several shows of The Devil’s Blood by now, be it never a whole show. They’re one of, if not thé, hottest rock/metal band in all of Holland at the moment, and their reign has yet to begin. Tonight, I was cleared of my skepticism towards this band and was blown away by the musical skills of these guys. Even though the show started horrendously with a broken bass string in the first minutes of the first song, the band recovered quickly into their psychedelic heavy metal stoner swing sound, or horror soul for short as they like to call it. Even another broken guitar string several songs later couldn’t ruin the mood anymore, the sheer guitar talent of SL and R combined is so apparent you can only gaze upon their skills and hope to get there yourself someday. Enough praising, just go check them out sometime and see them shoot sonic bursts into the heavens, cracking the very gates of St. Peter! (DemonDust)

Off course everyone was curious how the ‘new’ singer Kory Clarke of Warrior Soul fame, would perform with Trouble on stage. I have mixed feelings about it though. Although I really hated the attitude of Eric Wagner, I personally think his voice was better suited for the heavy/doom-metal of Trouble. Kory Clarke has a harsher and more raspy, screaming kind of vocals and on some songs it works, but on other songs it sounded a bit misplaced. Anyhow it was a pretty decent show, but in the end the boredom took a hold on the audience, that clearly came for one band only; namely Pentagram. The setlist was a good mix of newer songs, mixed up with some golden oldies like ‘Assassin’ from the great debut album Psalm 9. Another thing that I thought was a bit out of place, were the silly hippie moves of Kory, it looked like Lee Dorian having a stroke. Luckily in the end they played the classic doom-song ‘The Tempter’, which is still in my book the best Trouble song ever written. Surprisingly they didn’t play ‘Plastic Green Head’, which is always a crowd favorite. Perhaps the fact that only a handful of people was screaming for more was the reason why they didn’t return for an encore. (RoyBalowski)

What to write about this band (or person)! In the early 70’s this doom-band was widely neglected by everyone. In the end of the 70’s they disbanded the band, but after a while their vocalist Bobby Liebling started to operate under the name Pentagram again. In fact he is the only original member who kept the name Pentagram alive for all these years. This has resulted in a huge cult-status nowadays. This huge cultish vibe around this band resulted in a packed 013 on a Monday night. Everyone wanted to see a glimpse of the legend called Mr. Bobby Liebling! This phenomenon is up there in the uber-liga of cult doom-figures like Tom Iommi and Wino and perhaps even above them! I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised by this performance. It was heavy, it was loud! The walking corpse that is Bobby Liebling nowadays took his task as performer very seriously and for such a fragile, old looking guy, he danced and banged away on stage, including pulling his evil and yet humoristic faces. He had the audience eating out of his hands in a second. Performer pur sang! Musically the band played heavy and tight as hell, therefor the primitive, heavy doom-rock sounded massive! The volume was loud and brutal (thank god for earplugs). This was seriously way more impressive than I thought it would be. Great, massive and heavy sounding gig! Mr. Bobby Liebling for King of the underworld! May he tour with Pentagram as long as his body lets him! (RoyBalowski)