Still touring in support of their most successful record to date, The Divinity Of Purpose, Hatebreed is a regular in the European clubs and on its festivals. This year only they’re doing 4 separate tracks through this continent. In April they visited the Netherlands to headline Paaspop, in June they played Jera On Air, today, August 3th, they’re back with a headline show in the new TivoliVredenburg venue in Utrecht and today they also announced they’ll be back on November 12^th. After seeing many festival gigs of this band it was a relief to finally see them in a club again. As a support the Dutch band 18 Miles was asked to present itself to a bigger audience.

Until this moment I wasn’t familiar with 18 Miles, but they did surprise me in a positive way. With their hardcore in the vein of Stick To Your Guns and The Ghost Inside they delivered a nice and brutal sound, some heavy breakdowns and a ton of energy. Unfortunately they crowd didn’t really go with them as much as they deserved, but it didn’t affect their performance. Would love to hear more from them in the future.
 

After a Black Sabbath intro Hatebreed kicked in hard with ‘Perseverance’. Immediately the pit opened up, the people went berserk and the band kept the momentum going till the final Instagram/Facebook/Twitter photo was made in front of the audience roughly 90 minutes later. Although they kept the energy level high and the crowd involved in their show, I couldn’t help noticing they were on some kind of auto-pilot during some of the songs. Most songs were played with much enthusiasm, but the tension and build-up within a song like ‘Doomsayer’ was far less impressive than its album version. In the end they did deliver a great show with a whole couple of old songs (‘Under The Knife’ and some tracks from Satisfaction Is The Death Of Desire), some rare ones (‘A Call For Blood’ for instance) and the usual suspects like ‘Live For This’, ‘I Will Be Heard’ and ‘Destroy Everything’. The fact remains that they should watch out for overkill though.