It was up to Severe Torture to open this heavy night and they did it with much brutality. The little amount of solos did not really convince, because they weren’t played with enough soul. On the other hand the brutal death metal of these guys was stunning because of the good sound, the enormous aggressiveness and the deep growling vocals. The singer was a little bit too passive though and the snaredrum in the blastbeats didn’t always have enough power, but Severe Torture did exactly what you’d expect from a brutal death metal band: fucking destroy your neck and get the adrenaline pumping through your entire body!

 

Then it was time for God Dethroned to pleasure us with some more melodic tunes. I had some quite high expectations because they are active since around 1991 and their releases become more and more melodic without losing their original sound and feeling. Their latest effort, The Toxic Touch, offers a real good mix of death metal with beautiful melodic riffs. Unfortunately they couldn’t really entertain me on stage, which was mainly because of the dull presentation of the frontman. His vocals were too monotone, he didn’t add any depth to it and couldn’t present the music strong; maybe it was because this was the last show of an intense tour. The drummer of Severe Torture showed up to do some assisting vocals which was a nice variation, but it felt like we were all simply waiting for Vader to get on stage.

 

When it was finally time for Vader, the hall still wasn’t filled too well, but that didn’t prevent the audience to immediately get a good pit going on. Piotr is one of those frontmans who has the natural charisma to get an entire crowd excited just by his presence. The show couldn’t be named exceptional sensational, with Piotr speaking only a few words but he simply radiates wisdom and authority which gives their old school death metal an extra rush. Vader gave a nice tight show, but nothing more than that. Though, Daray did prove to be an excellent replacement for Doc (RIP) by ripping it up on the drums; very strong. With ‘Helleluyah’ the only song of the latest album with lyrics written by Piotr passed by and I must say that the chorus is a bit lame and too melodic; it didn’t really worked out well live. A special notice must be made about the awesome style of the bassplayer with him slapping on some parts of songs which really was amazing! All in all it was a good amusing night, but God Dethroned and Vader lacked in giving a really incredible show.