28 April 2024

30-07-2009 Walls of Jericho

Supports: The Red Chord, Human Demise; Venue: De Kelder, Amersfoort (Netherlands)
By: Sabine van Gameren

Three bands playing in the summer in de Kelder, a venue in Amersfoort (Netherlands) while summerfestivals and holiday season dominate. With Walls of Jericho headlining there was not a sign of this all to notice with a, to our surprise, pretty filled venue.

A hardcore evening starts with Human Demise, as that is what the band seem to tell the world. The evening is still young, but the Dutch band shows they have no problem with getting it started. The audience prefers to stay a bit in the back though. The first few songs were brought with not too much overwhelming aggression which speaks for them, as they choose to built up tension towards the end of the set. The band formed in 2004 and had a couple of small releases out. The band had a following as they brought some people from the southern part of the country up there as well. A long list of past gigs brought them some fame for sure and whoever attended this evening can understand that the guys are interesting act. The energy that comes with them is enough, though towards the end a little more emotion could have been shown. Especially the vocalist brought the last couple of songs a little less motivated as it seems. Overall this performance was a nice one to start with, a band you would like to see again, but maybe you would not see them do a headlining show with much allure.

Up next were The Red Chord. This USA based formation brought some more aggression in the venue. Their music tends more to death metal combined with grind core. A combination, which comes with a raspy voice and a riff that make an impression, but the audience started a little pit. Let’s say, a few people took a lot of space for their pit. It was for some others perhaps a bit hard to focus on the brilliant guitar work of the band. To include the audience the vocalist shared his microphone with some young enthusiastic fans in the front row, of which one actually did a pretty good job in contributing his vocals. The band brings their causes convincing, the aggression is well placed and The Red Chord surely set a good show there.

Walls of Jericho were up next, but due to circumstances they had to miss their frontwoman Candace. The band announced that they appreciated it if there were any fans that want to stand in, get up the stage but there was not anyone who dared to come up. The guys caught up by having their friend from The Red Chord standing in and so come that even with different vocalists there was still an amazing party going on during their performance.
The fact that the audience had to miss out on the vocalist was surely not the worst thing of the evening, for those who were front row or close by front row, might have noticed the absence of female sense as well by the stench of old sweat as soon as the band entered the stage. A shower would have done miracles. But for sake of metal the best thing to do was ignore it and enjoy the sound of this band that places their statements without holding back on anything. “Fuck The American Dream” seemed the success of the evening and when people were crowd surfing there was a statement from the audience to the band that they were not too pissed off the absence of Candace and they were having a good time anyway. Kudos for the band, that goes on for the fans, no matter what and showed their professionalism by coming with the solutions like they brought their friends in action and let the audience join them on stage.
Those who saw the message about Candace absence on time and decided to stay home, missed out on an energetic show with an incredible good atmosphere. Those were there might not have seen the Walls of Jericho as they expected, but most of them would probably not wanted to miss out on this anyway.

More pictures of this gig available at sabinevangameren.com

Links:
Human Demise MySpace
Human Demise Official
The Red Chord MySpace
The Red Chord Official
Walls of Jericho MySpace
Walls of Jericho Official