In the previous two years, Amsterdam Metalfest build a name and got two nice line-ups on the bill. This year they must have thought, we take the best bands out of those two bills, add some more great bands and we ask the Melkweg to be a host for this festival. And so it happened that Aborted, Seita, Magnacult, Cultura Tres, Ethereal, Red Eyes and Hillsphere would enter the stage on this saturday.

The first band of this festival was an instrumental Dutch band that is going to release their debut soon. Although Hillsphere played quite good, the drummer didn't have any sound out of his monitors and therefore it was an even better performance. This progressive post rock/metalband showed that they got what is needed on stage. By asking two guest vocalists for two different songs, it gave the band two whole new dimensions. While the first guestvocalist sounded good but didn't really know how to act on stage, the second one smashed it with superb grunts and a kind of psychedelic cleans. Although I am usually not into this kind of music, I really enjoyed the set and will definitely see this band once again.

New wave of Amsterdam heavy metal is the genre that Red Eyes labelled themselves. For the people that weren't into the dreamy music of Hillsphere, they are wildly awoken by this band. They got the heads banging quite early and a lot of people could really enjoy this, with a beer in at least one hand of course. Where there were a lot of sound difficulties with the previous band, now it was tuned out perfectly. The vocals were spot on and it seemed that it was a flawless performance by the rest of the band also. Great performance and certainly a band that you have to check out.

Sadly it was time for the very last show of Ethereal EVER! While I couldn't remember their performance on Krachtstroom last week, I was pleseantly surprised by the joy that they still had on stage. It probably was because they could leave with a bang and they knew that it was their last one of course, but still they showed how to perform on a stage. Of course they have 10 years of experience and won quite some prizes also. Today they had an amazing performace and their melodic death metal was accepted quite easily by almost the entire crowd. A high quality performance and it was quite logical that the band sold quite some merchandise after the show. Probably also because everything they sold was €5,-, but also because this performance was the best so far.

Up next was probably one of the most favoured Amsterdam metalband, MagnaCult. They have shared the stage with bands such as Kittie, Nile, King910, DevilDriver, Between The Burried And Me, Five Finger Death punch and many many more. Therefore the expectations of me, and quite some others were pretty high when they played once again in their hometown. But as they always do, they didn't let us down at all! The screams and grunts were agressive, the band played tight, the movement kept on going, what can I say more? If you don't know this band, look them up because they are amazing in my opinion.

After seeing one song of the sludge of Cultura Tres, it was clear that this wasn't my cup of tea, so it was time for a quick bite at the big yellow M

When I came back it was time for the death/thrash metal band Seita. Although the crowd wasn't pumped up anymore, Seita knew how to change this. While none of the bandmembers aren't Dutch, this still is an Amsterdam based band. So how do you start your show on Amsterdam Metalfest? You play a well-known Amsterdam tune called "Aan de Amsterdamse Grachten", quite a big sing-a-long was found in the venue while the band walked on to the stage. this cosy sing-a-long was roughly broken by the first chords of the band, and nobody seemed to care about this. Seita is a band that plays hard and fast, like you have to in thrash/death, and they do this quite well. Also today they got heads banging, people in the moshpit, the first wall of death that I saw and some circle pits also. Their set went by way too quick but they certainly left the crowd pumped up for the headliner of this evening.

The death metal/grindcore legends, as I may say, of Aborted got the honour to close the evening. Some people asked before the show if this was a true headliner, because there wasn't any other grindcore band and how well would they be accepted by the crowd? The anwser is quite simple.. There wasn't a bigger moshpit today, there weren't people stagediving during other bands and most of all, during this band one guy was able to crowdsurf, climb up the balcony and later on jump down from the balcony back to surf once again. It is amazing that this band plays so tight live and that both the vocals and the band are keeping up with the speed of the music. Founding member and lead vocalist Sven is one of the reasons that this band survived for 20 years already. It was definitely a true headliner and it was nice to see that they got quite a long set also, since they really deserve it.

It was a good edition of Amsterdam Metalfest with a very good headliner and despite Cultura Tres, it was a bill that fit perfectly with each other.