When I walked into the venue the first band was already playing. This Belgian band has only existed since 2007, but it looked like I stepped into a time machine and went back to the ’80s. Much too long and dirty hair, filthy sideburns and moustaches, screaming guitars, and very high vocals. This sounds like a perfect opening act at a thrash metal evening, doesn’t it? And it was! Although the sound wasn’t perfect during their performance, they managed to get some people moving and banging their heads. Unfortunately, the band lost my interest at about half of their set because I didn’t know anything about them before the show and quite some songs that succeeded each other sounded alike. Nevertheless, Evil Invaders  ended with a bang, regained my attention, and left the crowd pumped while they waited for the next band.

After the bar had been set quite high it was time for a Finnish band. It was definitely clear that this isn’t a band from the ‘80s, since its members are much too young. Nevertheless, Lost Society took the roots of the early thrash metal and gave a modern twist to them. The crowd went insane: there were moshpits, circle pits, stagedives, and people shouted the words along to the music. Although paper notes hung throughout the venue, which said that the band had requested that stagedives weren’t allowed, it quickly became obvious that only Destruction didn’t want any stagedivers today. Lead vocalist Samy loved the stagedives and ended the show with one as well. Time flew by because of this awesome music, the small jokes in between the songs, and the energy of both the crowd and the band on such a small stage. There is a reason that the band is signed by Nuclear Blast, which is that Lost Society kicks ass!

The bar had been set even higher, but do you really think Destruction cares about that? These veterans came on stage to do their thing and nothing more. This isn’t strange at all, because that’s how they became big and maintained their reputation. There were many technical difficulties during the first songs, but the band kept going and sounded amazing. After a few songs it was time to fix these difficulties, and therefore Schmier had the opportunity to talk to the crowd for a while. He mentioned that it was so great that the concert hall was quite full and that they could take two young thrash metal bands along on this tour, because it is quite hard to find them. I couldn’t agree more. Of course the main reason to go was to see the almighty Destruction again, but the hearts of true metalheads were filled with a little love for all of the bands. Although at first I was surprised by the 1,5 hour set the band would play, time flew by once again. They had a perfect set of very old, some newer and their newest songs. A mix of songs like “Total Desaster”, “Nailed To The Cross”, “The Butcher Strikes Back”, “Thrash Attack”, “Life Without Sense”, and “Hate Is My Fuel” were played. Because of their experience they nailed every song with or without technical problems. It is still amazing that such a powerful band exists of merely three members.

After these three bands it was already time to go home again. Thrash metal still lives on in both the older bands and the newer bands. Keep an eye out for these three bands in the future, you never know when a band like Destruction stops touring and you can see these bands while they aren’t that big yet!