Soil - Playing on 6/6/6
It’s four years ago since I last saw Soil, and I believe that it was the only show they ever did in Holland as well. After that show a lot has happened to the band, like two more albums and a new vocalist. Since it was 6/6/6, I felt it would be a good idea to visit a little metal show, to feel a little bit satanic after all. In vein, because neither of the bands mentioned something about the date. Weird…
First band up was the Dutch Ambiossis. Now I come from the nu-metal generation, but it is because of bands like this that a lot of old-skool metalheads really hate that particular genre. Thirteen-in-a-dozen riffing and drumming, songwriting that didn’t make any sense at all to me and whining vocals made sure I absolutely hated this band. They all seemed like okay musicians, but the songs were horrible. Transmissions from one riff to another were simply ridiculous. Most of the time they had nothing to do with the rest of the song and that is just not done. Occasionally the vocalist did a little percussion a la Incubus, but that was also completely out of context. I’ll quit here because I honestly have nothing positive to say about this band.
To be honest, my expectations for the Soil performance were very low. I listened to their second album once and I never even realized there was a third one until the day they had to play. With the loss of their previous vocalist I thought this band would be done. Boy was I wrong. They entered the stage very convincingly and executed each and every track with high expertise, skill and enthusiasm. A great interaction with the crowd and some kidding around made me soon dig this vocalist a lot, and his vocal capabilities were more than alright.
They had a marvellous sound that pounded my ears like mad. Their mixture of hard rock and heavy metal still got to me, especially the tracks of the first album pleased me a lot. And what I absolutely didn’t expect, one of the guitarists (the one with hair) substituted a lot of the old lyrics and he did a pretty good job at that. I must say that the new vocalist has a kind of heavy metal Bruce Dickinson undertone in his voice, but that seemed only to occur with the tracks of the new album. They of course played ‘Halo’ as one of the last songs and it was received in all the glory it deserves. In the end I was more than pleasantly surprised, satisfied, and drunk. Way beyond expectations, I just might listen to those other two albums some time soon.
Related Content
