13-10-2007 Detonation

Supports:Burning Darkness, Gheestenland; Venue: Chipolata ,Houten (NL)
By: Wouter van de Kamp

  This was about to be a nice evening with many friends and people I know because
  the second band’s singer/bassist is a friend of mine. And as it turned out it
  was quite that way. I at least knew 50% of the visitors. It was just 10 kilometres
  by bike so that was quite expectable. It’s one of the ingredients of a good
  evening of diverse metal. I founded this festival called Krikkit War (yes, named
  after the war in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Adam Douglas) myself
  and it’s good to see that it’s still around after, I think, at least five years.

So up to the bands. First off was the Groningen (NL) black metal band Gheestenland.
Finally some black metal here. I had not seen black metal since Summer Breeze, so I could use some proper dose. And that’s what they brought. They sang, or at least the singer did, in Dutch, but if it weren’t for the Dutch   songtitles that he announced with clean vocals I wouldn’t have known that. But black metal is not about proper clean vocals and diverse vocal techniques, so no worries about that. The almost obligatory corpsepaint in this genre added to their mid-tempo NLBM and overall for me it was very entertaining. Hope to see these guys again soon somewhere, but then with a somewhat more enthousiastic audience. Some people were a bit surprised by the cold, diabolical atmosphere that comes along with bands like these and they did not really know what to think of it.

 
 
  Second was Burning Darkness. As mentioned before this was the band of a friend of mine and it was clear that many people showed up just for him. With their new release this month called “7 Holy Crosses” and their 2005 release called The Cantarian Curse they have quite some cache to pick from. This was their second performance and credit where credit is due. For a second performance
  they played rather well. But in all honesty I do not understand why the organisation put this death/thrash metal as the second band. Gheestenland deserved that spot.

Musicwise BD should work on their global sound to make it sound like one band. In this way the guitarist has the most adjustments to do. I also wondered whether the guitarist and drummer were actually having fun on stage. They more or less just seemed to play their parts and that was it. Clearly the crowd seemed to enjoy seeing a friend on stage. But again credit where credit is due, they got a moshpit running when they played Blessed by Blood. Undoubtedly they therefore are less critical on the sound, style and stage performance. And in that sense it was good that this band was on the bill, for else the total attendance would probably not have exceeded the forties while now there were about 80 paying people. But does my personal opinion matter in this sense? Not at all, it is about entertaining visitors and that’s what they clearly did! Thanks to said friend I got hold of their setlist:

  Chapel of Fate
  Unholy Grounds
  The Ghost Tower
  I Vampire
  Blood Red Eyes
  Burn Me
  Blessed by Blood
  The Cantara Hills
  Until Eternity Ends / Ezel
  Ara Deus Sanguis

Encore : 7 Holy Crosses

And then there was some quality band. Finally. Detonation. For the regular visitors of this site this band is already known quite well. This Utrecht based gothenburg metal band is soon to celebrate their tenth birthday.

And their experience is quite visable on stage. They just gave away a lesson in performance to the other two acts. A pleasure for the eye. Even if you do not like their music that much, they’re still cool to watch. But if you DO like   their music, yeah, this was one of their better shows. Obviously the band enjoyed themselves on stage. And gathering from the cheers and moshpitting the crowd
  clearly enjoyed themselves as well. Unfortunately their light engineer Richard was unable to attend. The lighting was done by a young boy who, after asking him, told me to have never ever done a live show before, which was very clear. Fortunately they had their sound engineer Maarten with them, which was quite an improvement on the sound in general as compared to the previous two bands. But I think something is wrong with the sound in general in Chipolata, since I’ve heard far better in previous shows. Anyways, as said, they got a lot of moshpits running and there was a lof of headbanging. Although this band could already be seen very often in Utrecht lately, they still got it running. I am looking forward to their tenth aniversary party in dB’s Utrecht on the 26th of October. If you’ve got nothing to do yet… GO THERE! Cool thing to add is that they played “Through the Eyes of God” as a second encore. It is their oldest song, recorded in 1998 when they were still called Infernal Dream.

From what I and a friend of mine could remember they played:

  The Prophecy Unfolds
  Into the Emission Phase
  Portals to Euphobia
  Through the Eye of God
  Craven Ablaze
  Structural Deceit
  When Stone Turns to Ash
  Into Sulphur I Descend
  An Epic Defiance
  Fallout
  Chokedamp
  Forever Burried Pain
  Sword Carved Skin

 

More pictures of this gig available at Basementonline.nl

Links:
Detonation Myspace
Burning Darkness Myspace
Gheestenland Myspace
Chipolata