Due to journalistic expertise we decided to arrive early to check out Ghouls from Italy. Unfortunately this turned out to be a bit of a disaster. I never checked out this band before but it kind of gave me the Ditchcreeper creeps we had to witness last month (see Malevolent Creation and Vomitory gig). There were only a very few people in the venue and the sound was absolutely awful. Besides that, Ghouls’ mid-tempo brute death metal was far from tight. The drummer had a hard time to keep up with the fast parts and the band failed in the category “timing” at every note as well. The vocals only contained very low growls at mostly slow speeds and got boring after a few minutes already. After half an hour or so the band finally finished their set but definitely didn’t leave me with a satisfied feeling.

 

Dead Infection witnessed the same problem as Ghouls, the sound. Even though they took a long break to fix some sound problems, and the band even had their gear lined up behind Ghouls’ set (even the drums), the sound didn’t match the standards yet. Their music is where it got a little more exciting. Dead Infection played a nice mixture of old school grindcore in the veins of Napalm Death with dual vocal work including some pig squeals. The breaks between the short tracks were annoying though; the band rarely played two songs in a row and took a break just as long as the songs between each and every track, filling 1/3 of their set with silence and some bad English talk in between. The band has some potential but nothing to get really excited about at this point.

 

I was absolutely blown away by Polish death metal imprint Hate. I never checked out the band before, even though they exist for over 10 years now, and red some mixed stories about the band being bad live and way better on CD, as well as the band being amazing live. Only one way to find out then! Their sound can be compared to other Polish acts such as Behemoth and Vader, including corpse paint and dresses just like Behemoth. And for some reason, they managed to get their sound to absolute CD-quality in only 15 minutes of soundcheck. A great performance and some good crowd interaction turned into the first movement of the evening and definitely left me with a satisfied feeling, unlike the other acts of the night. Be sure to check these guys out and they already planned a next tour with Incarnation in January, hitting the Little Devil in Tilburg as well!

 

With the release of Souls of Damnation just a few months ago, True Norwegian Death Metal imprint Blood Red Throne is definitely a worthy headliner for the evening. I also heard some great stories about their live performances and really looked forward to see this band live. Their set, which lasted over an hour, contained mostly songs of their latest and fifth studio album. Souls of Damnation really has some great thrash metal influences that sound even better live, especially due to the drummer being an absolute machine. While only being a four-piece, the band produced a sound that sounded more like a six-piece while the vocalist did a great job on the crowd interaction. That being said, his appearance was pretty noticeable as well, wearing a white t-shirt covered in fake-blood and an upside down cross on this back, where the rest of the band members just wore regular clothing. Quality set nevertheless and it reminded me I should listen to this band way more often!

 

The remaining hours of the Friday night were spent at a Dubstep party at WATT that might have hurt the quality of the review.