The first band up was Dr. Doom, a band that is relatively new I believe. To be honest I didn’t see much of it because I was busy with chilling with my homies from Charlie*Adler and Cephalic Carnage. I recall some kind of death metal and grindcore, but unfortunately that’s all I can say.

 

Up next was Charlie*Adler, whom I haven’t seen playing in a while. Last time I missed them because of train delays, and this time I missed the first songs because of my interview with Cephalic Carnage. As soon as that was over I rushed down to see them play. Their Burnt By The Sun-like math/metalcore conveyed pretty well to me, it was just too bad that most people in the venue preferred to sit downstairs at the bar instead of checking the band out. Original drummer Niek has some problems due to a broken finger issue, so he is temporarily replaced by Roel van Helden who is also active in Delphian and Sun Caged. Quite a technical and progressive drummer and a perfect fit for this band. Although it looks a bit stupid seeing him read his music from a sheet of paper, he played everything very convincing and with a lot of power. Niek sat next to the stage, air-drumming everything along, clearly enjoying that he now for once just could listen to his band playing instead of having to do all the hard work. It’s just too bad that, like with Sengaia, too many members of this band are involved in other acts, which leads to the fact that this band doesn’t play that often. Fortunately I got to see this show!

 

How to begin expressing my love for Cephalic Carnage, I don’t know. I travelled for three hours to get here, that must mean something. And by the looks of the audience’s size I was the only one who did so. But what the audience lacked in size, they made up for in enthusiasm. The band played about the same songs as they did in Utrecht a week earlier, except this time they ended with ‘Observer To The Obliteration Of The Planet Earth’ from the Exploiting Dysfunction record. The sound was nice and loud, but clear enough to detect the song structures although I don’t think there are many people that actually know their songs very well. I do, so I banged my head like a motherfucker and played some air guitar again. A good show, that ended in a nice little after party with drinking, smoking and carrying equipment down the stairs. Stairs that were fucking brutal according to Lenzig.

 

Well was this show worth the trip I made. Hell yeah. The drinking didn’t end here by the way, for about the entire way back home everybody in Charlie*Adler kept drinking, until they passed out one by one. My gratitude goes out to those guys, for getting me home. Special thanks to Harold, who was so hardcore for dropping me off at 4.00 while he had to get up at 8.00 again. And special thanks to Tjerk, without whom I would have never found the venue!