At the 25th of April, we from Metalrage.com couldn't resist a nice night with some heavy industrial beats. De Kelder therefore was the place to be and with four bands they really had a varied night; with Ayin Aleph as the biggest outsider. Ayin Aleph started the night, but the guys from Sybreed were the real starter. The main dish contained of two terrific courses: Gothminister and Samael, but unfortunately not everybody was able to finish the final course.

From Paris came the gothic band Ayin Aleph. They brought a mix of metal with classical music in a baroque and romantic style, visually presented in this same style. Main figure was the singer with her seductive presentation, but she didn’t really succeed in this. Her classical opera singing is something you really got to be into to appreciate; I couldn’t stand it. That she regularly took place behind the piano was a nice alternation, but in total Ayin Aleph wasn’t much of an added value tonight. (Sledgehammer Messiah)

Today was the day I finally got to see Sybreed live, after four years of waiting for them to come to the Netherlands. I had the intention not to expect anything of their show, simply because industrial metal sometimes comes out really badly live, and I didn’t wanted to be disappointed. Fortunately Sybreed proved the opposite and played an in my eyes formidable show. While the singer and guitarist didn’t seem to be happy with the sound and had several conflicts with the sound engineer at the side of the stage, I was totally happy that everything in the hall was well audible. Sybreed doesn’t include a keyboard player (which could be a worthy addition to the band), but the volume of the samples in for example ‘Ex-Inferis’ was just perfect. Singer Benjamin let us hear that he could do both his screams as his clean vocals live very well, and whether drummer Kevin had already learned everything that Dirk Verbeuren has recorded on Sybreed’s latest effort Antares I don’t know, but it sure sounded skilled. When the beautiful track ‘Isolate’ also was performed I was completely delighted, and so seemed a large part of the audience. Also something I didn’t expect. (Mindsaver)

When I was travelling back from the concert of Down to my home, a while ago, I was talking to a guy and discussed our up-coming concerts. I told him I would go the Samael/Gothminister-gig amongst others and I already told him I didn’t know any songs from Gothminister. He then let me listen to one of their songs, which was on his mp3-player, and although it was just a short preview I knew right away I would definitely like them. Fortunately I could say the same after I saw them perform. The start of their set wasn’t that promising, because they fucked up their intro, but from there ‘till the end they completely convinced me of the power of their music. Beside some older songs, like ‘Devil’, ‘Gothic Anthem’ and ‘Nachtzehrer’, Gothminister also played some new gothic/industrial metal anthems. A live-clip from one of them, ‘Dusk Till Dawn’, can now be viewed at their Myspace. The attributes singer Machine used were a bit lame by the way, but ‘cause they did a good job in general I will forgive him for that. (Gilles)