First up were Australian technical deathmetallers Psycroptic. Last year I saw them opening up for Nile and there they already made a good impression on me, but there were some minor flaws. Like the drums lost some strength during the show and the singer couldn’t keep up with all his lyrics. This time you could obviously see that they had grown and become more experienced, which resulted in an excellent show. Except for their most awesome song ‘Alpha Breed’ the singer did very well, those singing lines were just too fast for him to perform live. Due to working commitments of original bass player Cam his duties were filled in by their sound engineer Michael, which he did phenomenal. The guitar player was a bit static, but that was all made up by all the great technical riffs. Fans of Necrophagist should definitely check this out once!

 

I wasn’t yet familiar with the young guys of Visceral Bleeding from Sweden, but I was completely blown away by their mix of brutal death metal with their technical skills. Imagine the aggressiveness of Dying Fetus with their pinches, but with the speed of a band like Hate Eternal and add some fast technical riffs. The singer looked a bit hilarious with a completely shaved head accept for his moustache, but man, he had a brutal and very threatening voice. The drummer bashed very tight and hard on his drums and I wondered how it could be that he still had these thin arms. At no point they were willing to slow things down; these guys really gave a good and intense show, keep an eye out for them!
 

 

Ten minutes or so before Deicide started drummer Steve Asheim came on stage to explain a little bit on the situation. We were told that Glen stayed home because of his personal situation, which wasn’t further explained. There would be no bass player this night and vocal duties would be taken over by Severe Torture drummer Seth van Loo. Steve emphasized that they hate to cancel a show and it was very late known that Glen couldn’t make it, so they chose for this solution. Seth had to learn the lyrics in just one afternoon and this was why he sung most of the lyrics from a paper he was constantly holding. This was really awkward to see and he couldn’t concentrate fully on his singing so there wasn’t much emotion and sufficient aggression in his singing to really create a kick ass feeling. But when you consider the situation he was in he did an amazing job and everyone really appreciated Seth's efforts. The missing of the bass guitar resulted of course in a not too strong and well live sound, but the crowd was going wild anyway on new songs like ‘Death to Jesus’ and old classics like ‘Dead but Dreaming’ from the Legion album. Deicide played tight and aggressive as is to be expected of these experienced guys, but it was definitely clear that everyone missed Glen. It was a good amusing show of which the improvisation could entertain everyone, but a Deicide without Glen simply doesn’t really feel like Deicide, so lets hope they’ll quickly come back to set things straight!