Just one day after the ridiculous carnival, where everybody dresses up and drinks gallons of beer in one day, I went to see Ill Nino together with my colleague Gilles. Almost one year ago I saw them in the same venue and I was overwhelmed by the energy of the band and fanbase that are still active with the band. So my plan this year was quite easy. Although I’m not a real fan of the band I’m always in for a night of metal with a latino twist.

Exilia was the first band to warm up the stage. I wasn’t familiar with the band and what I heard that night didn’t make me run to the merchandise immediately either. The music was quite simple and had some sort of catchy groove. Overall I would describe it as Evanescence on steroids and to be honest I don’t like women on steroids. Well eventually you could say they still did a great job considering they even got the crowd moving during their last song and the first pit of the night was a fact.

The second band of the night was God Forbid, a band that I witnessed several years ago when they toured with Machine Head. Back then they left a nice impression on me, which was something I also could say of their latest album Earthsblood. As always there where some sound problems during the first song, but after a while this became better. The only major setback were Byron's vocals. Turned out he had a cold. This obviously resulted in a disappointment for me and the show would go into the books as a not too special one.

Ill Nino, the band where everybody was waiting for. Since a lot of people decided to check out the floor it was a nice opportunity for us to go the higher grounds of the venue. From there we watched the show and saw the crowd go insane. This was probably very easy because more than half of the venue was already screaming before Ill Nino even played one note. The crowd didn’t even bother when there were some major sound problems with for example the vocals and later on with the acoustic guitar.

Between the songs some guy threw a drink carton of Chocomel onstage which eventually resulted in a speech of Cristian about how great Holland is. Well thank you, we know. We even have the best beer in the world, Heineken. The crowd didn’t agree with that, which was probably for the first time that night. After this it was on with the show and the crowd loved it. After an hour of latino metal it was enough for me. With Ill Nino playing their latest song me and Gilles decided to call it a day and went home.