The last time that Heaven Shall Burn played in the Netherlands was one and a half year ago in Eindhoven, during the Hell On Earth tour. Now they returned to a city near Eindhoven, namely Den Bosch. The tour back then was in support of the just released Deaf To Our Prayers, now it was time to present us Iconoclast.

Metalcore might be a dead style, but I’m still very pleased with the typical variant of the Germans. Misery Speaks is one of those bands that aren’t familiar with clean vocals, but more with brutality, blast beats and more melodeath-orientated stuff. The band really did their best but had a hard time in putting Den Bosch into motion. Misery Speaks and thus their music weren’t probably very known by the public while the hall was also quite empty at the time that these guys had to play - so that obviously had to do with it, because what these guys brought was pretty good. Though, halfway the band finally managed to get the audience’ attention, when all of a sudden the bassist started to speak in Dutch. His kind words in our own native language worked for everybody and so everyone was able to come a few steps closer to the stage, while also a moshpit was started when the band continued their set. Nice opener. (Mindsaver)

Aborted, the king of the ever growing Belgian death metal scene always ensures a blasting show at a high level. Bandleader and vocalist Sven de Caluwe jumps across the stage and has one of the most convincing stage presentations possible. This compared with the tight musicianship of the talented people that De Caluwe always knows to get on his side; the audience had something nice to digest. For most of the people it seemed hard to digest however and the audience didn’t really explode, probably because Aborted doesn’t totally match with the Heaven Shall Burn audience. A nice chance to get to know this band I’d say. Aborted played one song of their forthcoming record, which sounded promising and was in line with the material that we know from the last records. With ‘Dead Wreckoning’, the song with the cool samples from the movie American Psycho’, Aborted ended the show with full dedication, in spite of the half-heartedly crowd participation. (Sledgehammer Messiah)

I already know Heaven Shall Burn for quite some time now, but when I had to review their latest effort Iconoclasts Part 1 (The Final Resistance) I was completely sold to these Germans. From the classical interlude ‘Awoken’ 'till the instrumental ‘Atonement’, I was completely blown away by their overwhelming modern metal. Whether they could do the same with me while playing live I didn’t know, because I never had witnessed a HSB-show before (except for the one on the bonus-DVD of the Iconoclasts album). Just before my first live-experience with them I had a chat with guitarist Maik, which you can read somewhere else on this site, and he told me that after this tour HSB will be a bit rare in Europe to see live, so I already was satisfied that I was present this night in Den Bosch. During their show I was completely blown away by their performance and after the show I was even more convinced of the power of the newer stuff.

They entered the stage, while ’Awoken’ was played and after the final tones they released their fury in the form of the song ’Endzeit’. The crowd’s reaction was way better compared to the reactions towards the previous bands and during ’Voice of the Voiceless’ there even was a nice wall of death. The set was short, but very heavy and convincing. Most of the music was of their latest release and some old school fans may not have liked that, but you don’t hear me complain. Amongst the other songs that were played were ’The Weapon They Fear’, including the ’Echoes’ intro, ’The Seventh Cross’ and ’Counterweight’. All in all a great show from a great band and I’m already looking forward to the Elsrock festival, where they play with Pro-Pain and Deathstars amongst others! (Gilles)