It’s been almost a year since Cephalic Carnage played on one hot summer day at the Powerfest in 013, and now they start their European tour in Holland, just weeks before the release of their new album Xenosapien. Luckily this means that we are gonna hear some new songs at this show!

“There ain’t no party like a Malkoholic party”, that was the catchy chorus with which Dutch math rockers Malkovich opened tonight and to use a cliché: you either love it or you hate it. I would be part of the latter group of people because I found that catchy tune so goddamn annoying, but it’s a fact that it is one of those catchy tunes which stick in your head and can make a band. These guys got more of these catchy drum rhythms, guitar riffs and so on while their music can be categorized under math because of those freaky and chaotic riffs. Furthermore they use some typical rock chords over which hyper Hugo sings his mainly screamo like lines. Overall I must say that it actually is a pretty talented band, but Hugo really got to do something about his insipid presentation in between the songs. (Sledgehammer Messiah)

Considering that we went to the show early to do some serious bong smoking with the guys of Cephalic Carnage, I have real difficulties remembering the setlist because I was stoned as a motherfucker, but I do recall that they only played songs from the last three albums; being Lucid Interval, Anomalies and the upcoming Xenosapien. Immediately in the first song it was clear that Zac’s guitar wasn’t working fine at all. Nonetheless this problem never really bothered me, because overall the sound was so loud it still just blew you away. Hell I banged my head of to songs like ‘Dying Will Be The Death Of Me’, ‘The Will Of The Way’, ‘Lucid Interval’, ‘Black Metal Sabbath’ (yes they still play that song, without masks now though), ‘Scientific Remote Viewing’ (which was dedicated to me for bringing the bong, how cool!), ‘Anthro-Emesis’ and ‘Counting The Days’. New songs were ‘Endless Cycle Of Violence’, ‘Divination & Volition’ , ‘Touched By An Angel’ and the insane track ‘Heptarchy (In The U.K.)’

Even though they were stoned as hell for sure, I witnessed their purchase at the world’s oldest coffeeshop, it sounded very tight. Especially drummer John seems to have improved even more since last time, and the new bass player Nick appears to have no problems handling those sick songs at all. My god they blew me away, can’t wait to go again! (DemonDust)