I haven’t been blogging a lot lately and that’s mainly because I’ve been pretty busy and that is an understatement. Next week will be a week of tests and I need to be prepared for that if I want to pass them all.

But anyway, I thought it was time for an update anyway, so here it is with the following subjects:
- Unholy Alliance Tour 2006
- Bloodshed Fest 7
- Knepper @ Pascal

These are all music related subjects instead of the usual geeky stuff, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a look eh?

Unholy Alliance Tour 2006

Last friday my brother and I went all the way to ‘s Hertogenbosch (the capital of the province where we live) to see the thrash-metal band Slayer. But it wouldn’t be the Unholy Alliance Tour if they were alone, so they brought 3 bands with them:
- Thine Eyes Bleed
- Children of Bodom
- In Flames

Thine Eyes Bleed is a somewhat Deathmetal like band from Canada, allthough they sounded pretty good, the on-stage show was weak. They just played their songs and that’s it. Barely any movement and their charisma wasn’t really working either. They didn’t really manage to get the crowd with them and thus they appeared very distant.

Children of Bodom on the other hand had a good on-stage show. They got the crowd very enthousiastic and they played really good. Unfortunatly I’m not really fond of their music, they sound a bit too repetitive and they bring you an overkill of solos all of the time beit guitar solos or keyboard solos, they all sound the same anyway. Even the keyboard solos sound kind of like guitar solos. But even though I don’t like their music, the performance was good and I enjoyed it.
In Flames… What’s to say about In Flames? They played good, they’re show was good and I had a good time and besides that I do enjoy their music. I think that says enough.

And last but not least, the band we came for, Slayer. The all classic Thrash-Metal band that more or less started it all. Back when they started there was only Slayer and Vader, there were no other professional bands that made music like them and they still rock all the same. I heard that they even managed to make a new studio album that sounds all the same as all the other ones after so much time of not releasing anything. Hey, didn’t I just say that I don’t like it when a band a really repetitive? I think I did, but I’ll make an exception for the machinegun rythms of Slayer.
Almost all of the songs have the same theme, they’re all very loud and mostly pretty fast too. Almost all feature somekind of screeching guitar solo, or more of them and overall it all sounds pretty much the same to me, but for some reason it doesn’t matter…

All in all, a great night out, allthough with €48,00 the price was pretty steep.

Bloodshed Fest 7

Another day, another concert, this one was last saturday featuring 11 grindcore bands started around half past 4 in the afternoon. Again, I said something about band that are repetitive, well, I don’t know who all goes to Bloodshed Fest for the beautifull music, but not me. Allthough I like grindcore sometimes for a few minutes, it’s nearly the definition of repetitive music. Constant hammering on double-bass, songs with 3, 2 or sometimes only 1 tone on guitar and the same for bass and a lot of snare hammering as well. All the same, all of the time. But most of the bands are just fun to look at and it sometimes results in a good mosh-pit which can be a good medicine against the frustrations of the past week.

A few bands there did kind of stand out from the rest though:
- Anal Penetration
- Rompeprop
- Gronibard

It’s a shame that I only saw the last few minutes of the performance by Anal Penetration. It didn’t sound particularly good, but the thing that made this one so special was that Anal Penetration has only 1 bandmember. An old and dirty looking computer on the back of the stage provided very unrealistic sounding drums and even some guitar and bass samples while the only bandmember was standing on the front of the stage with his guitar slamming and screaming as if his life depended on it.

Rompeprop is a 3 headed Dutch goregrind band. Goregrind is nothing more than grindcore with a gory theme to it, so that’s nothing special. But the cool thing about Rompeprop is that the guitarist/vocalist is a very friendly and stand-up guy. He’s simply cool and this time he even brought his parents and his sister to watch the show. The parents of the drummer were also present. Most of their songs are in Dutch, so that gives them even another little edge (:P) allthough it’s pretty much impossible to make any words out of the with effects scrambled vocals. Second time I’ve seen them now and also the second time that I’ve loved them. And before I forget, the vocalist has a quite good sense of humor.

Ah, Gronibard. Also the second time I’ve seen them now. Before they were with 4 people, now with 5 and I must say, that second guitarist surely helps making them sound more convincing, more powerfull. Gronibard is a Frensh pornogrind band who sound, unlike many other grindcore bands, not overly repetitive. Like goregrind, pornogrind is just grindcore, but with a special theme. And you’ve probably allready guessed it, it’s themed around pornography. Nothing to it though, I have no idea what they’re “singing” about since it’s all Frensh and I happen not to speak a single word of Frensh… Well, maybe some words, but insufficient to have a conversation in Frensh, that’s for sure.
Anyway, 2 out of 5 bandmembers of Gronibard play on stage naked. The others cover themselves with rediculous clothes and look like idiots, but that’s just part of Gronibard and I think that they wouldn’t be so great if they wouldn’t do it that way. Next to Rompeprop, they were the highlight of the night.

I have actually taken a few pictures and I even shot a video of Rompeprop during Bloodshed Fest 7. These pictures can be found in the gallery and I’ll upload the video on Youtube when I have converted it from .mov to .wmv or .mpg (my camera uses the quicktime .mov format… I hate quicktime)

Knepper @ Pascal

It’s allready quite some time ago that we played there (september 29th), but now there are some pictures: Knepper @ Pascal
My band Knepper is only in the first section of pics, after that, it’s the other band of the guitarist of Knepper, Goatriders from planet Mutoid.

That’s it for today, good evening.

Ps.: images will follow soon, I can’t upload them right now due to a slight issue with the server.