Vader is since their latest release in 2006, Impressions In Blood almost continuously on the road, this time under the denominator “Bloody Summer Tour”. Dragonlord, a black metal side-project of Testament-guitarist Eric Peterson, were announced as Vader’s direct support, but they got lately replaced by Belphegor.

Opener of tonight was Swiss death metal band Requiem, who were already playing when I entered the venue. In advance I really didn’t want to miss anything of them because their latest record Premier Killing Machine is absolutely awesome, but after only hearing them play while I walked through the aisle I didn’t feel bad about my late arrive anymore. Man, it could have been Belphegor who were already on stage. The sound and the performance were that bad, that it was even hard for me to just recognize a few songs. Only positive thing I can mention were Michi Kuster’s grunts of which some were pretty cool, rapidly changing from sound.

Next was Austria’s Belphegor, one of a select group of black metal bands that I actually dig. Armed with bulletbelts around their middle, they unleashed some ultra fast black fucking metal, that despite of the sound, which still wasn’t how it could be in the W2, made me pretty happy. I never witnessed many black metallers in the past, but this sure was a nice experience, as well as seeing the well-known Tony Laureano (ex-Nile and session drummer for Dimmu Borgir, Malevolent Creation and 1349) behind the kit, basically just blasting on and on. On the other hand, the performance could have been better. There wasn’t much spectacle on the stage, neither was there a lightshow. And also the intermezzos were kinda strange; they were filled with samples of for example church bells while the band was standing in position with their backs to the public. This way they presented them as intros, but in the end there was just silence before they started to play something that didn’t fit to the ‘intros’ at all. All in all some okay noise but nothing for the eye.

Then it was time for the mighty Vader, a band that is so over the top! I’ve seen them twice last year and just as then I was completely overwhelmed by pure death metal. I mean, listen to “This Is The War”! That is not just war, it’s the fucking end. A few long-haired metalheads knew how to headbang to this extreme music, but I surely didn’t. I even had difficulties with simply holding my feet on the ground, not being pushed away by only Vader’s music. After Requiem and Belphegor, it seemed that the sound was alright now, and well, I still can’t really talk about a lightshow since only a few spots were used halfway the show but I couldn’t really care less anymore. Tracks that passed by were “Epitaph”, “Carnal”, the forementioned “This Is The War” and the ultimate death metal track “The Book”. My night was fullfilled.