The Belgian black metal band Gorath had the honour of starting this evening of grimness, which they did fairly well. Their progressive black metal was executed nice and tight and with a good sound, making it an enjoyable show to see. Although I have to admit that after a certain number of songs I gradually lost interest. Not because the band started slacking, but more because of little variation in their sound which made it a bit monotonous in general. But overall certainly a good band to start the evening with! (DemonDust)

I had never seen Dutch black metal band Infinity yet, nor heard them so I didn’t know what to expect. While Gorath was playing, the door to the dressing room opened and I saw the guys from Infinity putting corpse paint on their faces already. Oh boy! Even though the band already formed in 1995, I can’t say I was very impressed by their performance. Musically it was a bit of melodic black metal mixed with some Norwegian Black with a Gorgoroth riff here and there. Of course they were corpsepainted but had some candles on stage as well and threw ashes in the crowd during the set. There were huge silences between the tracks and people were starting to get annoyed by this and started to scream stuff at them like “last track!” I guess this should be a sign for a band to draw an end to it, but no. The performance lasted for about an hour and building up took them longer than expected as well, which resulted in a pretty annoyed crowd who all came to see Mayhem instead of this not-very-special Dutch band. Sorry guys, but this performance and the circumstances didn’t make me very happy either! (Brent_)

 

Cellebrating their 25^th anniversary, I feel stupid for not having seen Mayhem before, as De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is still one of my favourite albums ever, at least within black metal. The band started late because of the whole Infinity performance and I already felt it coming that I had to leave early. Luckily, Mayhem started pretty soon after Infinity. Not too long after the intro started, singer Attila entered the stage in a sort of purple priest outfit with a scythe with a lantern hanging on it. He is known for his incredible outfits, and luckily it wasn’t too crazy as with Sunn O))) last time. They kicked in with ‘Pagan Fears’ from De Mysterris Dom Sathanas, even though I’ve read they don’t play much of this classic album any more. The rest of the set contained a pretty good mix of Mayhem’s classics over the last 25 years or so. ‘Anti’, ‘From The Dark Past’, ‘Deathcrush’, ‘Buried By Time and Dust’, ‘Illuminate Eliminate’, ‘De Mysterris Dom Sathanas’ and ‘Freezing Moon’ are just a few examples of this greatest hits setlist. Attila proved once again to be such a varied singer, ranging from deep growls to high pitched black metal screams and also an excellent entertainer, swinging around his head with the scythe. But also I wonder how drummer Hellhammer can still perform such a show after in Mayhem for over 20 years! His blasting is almost one of a kind, performing a black metal blast straight for over 4 minutes in a row. Incredible to see and oh so tight. Sadly I had to leave to catch my last train during ‘Freezing Moon’ but there’s definitely hunger for more. Whoever thought there’s not much left of Mayhem after all those years is terribly wrong. Amazing performance! (Brent_)