Sinate
In front of a handful of interested visitors, the first band to kick off this night was the New Zealand death/black-metal band Sinate. To my knowledge this was their first European tour. This band turned out to be an o.k. opening band, that kind of blended death/thrash-metal with some black-metal elements. A little bit like how Legion Of The Damned would play black-metal! The sound was absolute terrible, almost as if it was sabotaged deliberately. The variation between songs was good; some songs had a more hardcore groove feel to it, where other songs were pure fast blasting headbangers. Another band that they reminded me of was Malevolent Creation. With a better sound, this band might be enjoyable!
 

This Dutch progressive/technical death-metal band got somehow on the Marduk bill for all Benelux shows. It’s still a big mystery to me why? This band was definitely misplaced. The prog death-metal, with clean and grunt vocals, sounded way too slick and smooth for the hardened Marduk crowd. It kind of sounded like Dream Theater playing death-metal, with a very annoying bass-player that probably was dreaming about playing the Wimbledon stadium! This Dutch band recently released their debut album, but it got boring really quickly for me. Especially after Sinate, that in my opinion deserved the second spot on the bill.

At first it seemed that this night was not going to be a crowded night, but in the end it was still nicely packed with around 300 people. Maybe the fact that Marduk attended Holland with Vader only 4/5 months ago didn’t help to sell out this gig. In the past I heard a lot of rumours about this band, being ignorant and a lazy band, which often performed badly on stage. Well, I have seen a totally different band then! What I saw was a tight, hardworking band that really gave 100% to get the dull crowd going. They even came back for some encores. What we got was a tight and loud as hell (thank Satan for earplugs), fast and blasting black-metal gig. Their fast black-metal is filled with machinegun drums and enormous fast shredding guitar-parts. In the first few songs it is really impressive, the sheer force and brutality that comes off the stage. The danger with fast bands though; it becomes boring really quickly! The same goes for Marduk. After 5/6 songs you’ve been beaten to pulp by this band and their immense brutality and speed, that you simply had enough (at least I did). So when a mid-tempo song kicked in after 40 minutes in the set, it was a welcome relief, but way too late to keep my attention! Nonetheless my respect, for this band has grown a lot. Their position in the black-metal community is well deserved.