Before this evening I gave Mercenary’s latest CD, The Hours that Remain, a couple of spins and was already pretty impressed by this mixture of Soilwork, Nevermore and a high dose of heavy metal vocals. Their sound was fabulous this evening and they showed us that they can give a hell of a show! With the frontman looking very much like Tim Owens, also sounding like him when reaching the high notes and the musical influences of this band being very clear they aren’t too original. Though the entertaining mixture of styles isn’t heard too often and the audience definitely digged it! 

 

While the venue still wasn’t too crowded it was time for some good thrashing around with The Haunted. From the first notes of ‘The Flood’ a nice pit was going on and would be there the entire night. Not that it would satisfy Peter Dolving though, because at the half of the set he remarked that every time he played the Netherlands it seemed like the audience were all on drugs or just standing there and moving around a bit. Dolving looks really at his place back with The Haunted because the fast and slower tracks are brought with a lot of conviction. Anyway, the audience had every reason to have a fucking great time with the ingenious riffs, recently referred to as ‘happy-riffs’ by Kerry King in an interview on this site by the way, played excellent and a perfect sound. The new songs often were a pleasant variation because of the atmospheric segments and nice slow grooving rhythms, but oldies like ‘Hatesong’ definitely had the best reactions and rightfully so! We even got treated to some At The Gates which always works with the crowd.

 

Unfortunately the band had to stop a bit early so we didn’t get 'No Compromise' and 'DOA' (two of the band’s best songs) but all in all there was no reason to complain.