CRADLE OF SHIT, IMMOLATION, BLOODY SIGN

Strasbourg, La laiterie, 16/04/03

The promotion for this concert hasn't been done really effectively, because IMMOLATION joined the bill quite late. Then almost 98% of the crowd was composed of faggothic scumbags wearing the whole CRADLE OF SHIT T-shirts catalogue, and the whole pseudo sophisticated "evil" make-up that goes with.... Argh!

But let's talk about music. BLOODY SIGN, the Colmar based death/black metal band opened the hostilities. I never had the chance to see them with this line-up. But I have to say that I was positively impressed by their performance. Hagend, the singer has quite enough charism and a good voice, and as he wasn't drunk, he gave a really good performance. The general sound was powerful, especially the drums, but the guitar sound was a bit muddy... But hopefully it didn't ruin the intensity and the whole comprehension of he riffs. The dudes played two new songs and they are in a PESTILENCE vein that doesn't lack of agressivity. The whole "Estonian session" demo and some titles of the "Primitive horde" demo were played, as well as the DARKTHRONE's "Under a funeral moon" cover. The audience got surprisingly well into BLOODY SIGN's music, which is far from being comparable to the infamous utter shit of CRADLE OF FILTH... Anyway, it was quite amazing to see the audience screaming the name of BLOODY SIGN and encouraging the band... Quite astonishing for an opening band. I guess it's the "I never saw a real metal concert and I was blown away because it's not as shitty as the putrid norsecore or new metal shit I listen to everyday" syndrome, but hell it was cool to see people reacting so good toward the unholy Death metal of BLOODY SIGN, which delivered one of its best concerts to date.

IMMOLATION took the stage right after that, and as it was a 3 bands bill, they could afford playing 1hour and a half!!! This was extremely great to watch such a cult death metal ritual happening before my eyes... They opened with the first song of their last album "unholy cult", and never stopped harassing the crowd with loads of unholy blasphemic heaviness. Arrrrggghhh!!!! These guys know how to deliver the goods. They have a real charisma and one can feel that they are in for the music, and not the commerce. Robert Vigna, as the main compositor of IMMOLATION's music is an amazing beast on stage. He turns his riffs to life; and put so much dedication and feeling in his playing, that it's purely a pleasure to watch him performing. Ross Dolan isn't less impressing with his utterly deep voice and way of attacking the bass. Of course, the other guitarist, who handled the guitar in ANGELCORPSE (rip), and the drummer gave also all the anger they had in their guts. It was cool to see Alex Henandez standing behind his drum kit and encouraging the crowd to howl and drive insane!! Pure unholiness. And as IMMOLATION had quite enough time to play, we even got a couple of songs from the cult "Dawn of possession" LP!!!! Argh!!! I am sorry not to remember the titles of IMMOLATION tracks, but Trust me when I tell you that thy played songs from their whole discography. It was worth to watch. Really, I mean that IMMOLATION managed to release an album that's as cult as "Dawn of possession", and they proved it on stage. Pure unholy cult!!!!!!!

As for CRADLE OF SHIT, don't expect from me to spend more than ten lines on their utterly crappy merry melodies. Even if they may be nice people who know the metal classics, it doesn't seem that it's a problem for these people to look like a parody of cartoon vampires... They will never reach the class and majesty of early KISS, nor MERCYFUL FATE nor IRON MAIDEN. And the worse isn't the band, but the incredible amount of faggots pretending to be evil that compose their audience. DIE!!!!!!!!!!

Nathaniel.            

The IMMOLATION Photos were taken in Decembre 2002/ Anvers, by Frederic Lemaire.