While half the crew was banging their heads in the HMH in Amsterdam Zuidoost on ‘Angel Of Death’, I strode off to the heart of the city to watch the Swedes from Soilwork in action. As supporting acts they asked One-Way Mirror, the other band of Soilwork drummer Dirk Verbeuren, and Zimmers Hole to participate in this tour through Europe. Due to a relative of one of Zimmers Hole’s members that passed away, they decided to cancel the tour and the French act Ananta became their replacement.

Just when I entered the venue, Ananta started their set. Although I occasionally banged my head a bit, I wasn’t very impressed. Their mixture of thrash and hardcore sounded really chaotic, the sound wasn’t that good and they made too many mistakes. Also, the clean vocals weren’t that flawless. They were very energetic on stage and I enjoyed their stage performance, but after half an hour I was glad their time was up.
 

I also wasn’t familiar with One-Way Mirror, but contrary to Ananta, they really amazed me. The sound was better, the vocals of Mnemic’s Guillaume Bideau were very powerful and the band as a whole played very tight. Songs like ‘Destination Device’ and ‘Keeping Me Away’ are really worth listening to when you like a combination of melodic metal and rock. Interesting band. I’ll keep an eye out for them from now on.
 

Due to the dreaded time tables of public transportation I wasn’t able to see the whole set of Soilwork, but the 35 minutes that I did see were great! Right from the start the audience went completely wild and in front of the stage nobody was standing still. Especially when they played material from Stabbing The Drama, ‘One With The Flies’ for example, they gained a lot of positive feedback from the crowd. The songs from Sworn To A Great Divide proved also very suitable for playing live. All in all an enjoyable night which could have turned out to be better, but then I shouldn’t have lived in a narrow-minded little village with crappy public transportation services.