I absolutely love this band! They play stoner/space rock with a wide range of influences like traditional hard rock, a bit of jazz and 'So Be It' of their album Sound Grenade even combines soul/funk with heavy rock. Unfortunately they don’t play this song live, because there’s a guest vocalist on it, but they did play a lot of other great songs.

This was only the second time I saw Astrosoniq live (I had to cancel 3 times before!) and I haven’t bought their new album Speeder People yet, but I did recognize some of the new songs from the last show I’ve seen (Roadburn pre-party 2006.)

I’m not sure which songs they played exactly this time, because I’m not very good at remembering titles, but I did know most of them.

 

Cool thing about Astrosoniq is that their producer functions as a fifth band member, producing the intros and space sounds live. This way you don’t loose any of the atmosphere created on the albums.

Most people in the audience came to see Gorefest, but along the show it got more crowded and people started to react more enthusiastic towards the band. Martijn, who usually goes to a lot more brutal gigs, liked it too. He had to get used to the fact that Astrosoniq’s songs are quite long, especially compared to Death/Grind songs, but he loves seeing good musicians at work. He mentioned it seemed like the drummer and guitar player were playing solo’s throughout the whole song, every song. The drummer uses only a standard drum set, with only 3 cymbals, one bass pedal and 2 tom’s, but manages to keep it divers by his his jazzy way of drumming.

I briefly spoke to the ‘space dj’ and drummer after the show and told them I’d write a positive live view, so here it is: I loved this show and I can’t wait to see them again.

 

I’ve never been a big fan of Gorefest. Not because I don’t like their music, but because I never took the time to actually listen to it. I guess I’m a bit too young to be an old fan and when I did discover Death Metal I only wanted to hear the fastest and sickest music around. After their reunion I helped Lowlife Media making a music video for For the Masses and I listened to their latest album La Muerte a lot (still do). I finally got around to listen to some of their early work and now I understand why this band used to be so big before their split.

Looking at the people showing up today, I’d say they still have a lot of fans, both from ‘the old days’ as well as the new generation of head bangers.

 

 

Gorefest has done a good amount of shows since their comeback and they play like a tightly running machine. The show had a mechanical look to it too, because of too much use of strobe lights. Almost every blast beat was accompanied by these annoying epilepsy inducing menaces. It looks cool, but it’s damn annoying if they shine right into the audience’s eyes. The sound was extremely loud and a bit chaotic during the first couple of songs, but improved during the set. The band played with a no-nonsense attitude, without too much talking between the songs and they seemed to have a good time, as well as the audience.

Gorefest played for almost two hours, so there was opportunity to play a lot of old work as well as new. It felt like only half an hour, so I didn’t get bored one minute. Great show!

A very satisfying evening of heavy music. I hope the Mezz will book more Metal bands in the future, 'cause only once or twice a year is way too little, especially in the South of the Netherlands, where the heavy music scenes are really big!
 

Too bad I don’t own a decent camera, but I took some pictures with my cell phone and some of them came out pretty OK. Unfortunaltely I only came up with this idea during Gorefest’s show, so no pictures of Astrosoniq. Sorry for that.