When I entered the venue Grave already started to bury the audience in their aggressive straight forward death metal. That’s what I like so much about them; because the same notes are struck multiple times in a row in blasting parts you get a fast ánd grooving sound. It’s a bit like the Bolt Thrower effect: you get the feeling like a complete tank division is running over you. Well, this time that feeling didn’t really arise, because of the shrill sound of the venue. This would become a problem during the entire night and it really took away the forcefulness of Grave. Mainly old songs were played like ‘Turning Back’ from the Soulless album. With ‘Burn’ from the latest album the newer material was worthy represented, but I had liked to hear some more of the younger material. I must definitely see them again with a better sound and maybe then they also play their songs with more passion.

 

Unleashed seemed to cope a little better with the shrill sound; frontman Johnny Hedlund really entertained the audience and tried to get everyone singing the lyrics along. First with a song like ‘I don’t want to be Born’ and later with the almost hilarious song ‘Death Metal Victory’. It became an ultra long version of the song because everyone really enjoyed the singing along and I just couldn’t get that damn smile of my face, perfect! Furthermore the band just put up an excellent set of death metal and when Martin of Dismember came on stage to play some riffs along the party was complete.

 

After that Entombed really surprised me with their awesome show. It was much more lively and faster than can be heard on their latest and unconventional live CD, Unreal Estate. Because frontman Petrov doesn’t handle any other instrument besides his voice, in contrast to the two preceding bands, he could make good use of the entire stage and work the crowd. And so he did, with much result because the crowd was going crazy and we witnessed the biggest pit of the night. This was completely deserved, because Entombed simply gave a very strong show and with only one guitarist the sound was the best we heard this evening. The excellent choice of songs was definitely an important ingredient for the success because with songs like ‘Supposed to Rot’ from their debut the audience was served very well.

 

Dismember had the honor this night to be in the last slot, but after all the great bands that already played this night they couldn’t really convince me. The almost boring drums had a large part in this, because a real blastbeat is rarely heard and the drums are simply to one-sided. The song ‘Of Fire’ was especially dedicated to the front row bangers, but the rest of the audience didn’t really seem to be on fire. Well, at least Dismember really had a blast on stage, like they did some cheers together, which was nice to see. Unfortunately I could only see a small part of the show because of the fucked up train connection and although the sound wasn’t too well the entire event I really had an awesome night with the Masters of Death!