Pé Lemme
As I entered the venue, Pé Lemme already took the stage. I was fifteen minutes late. The Dutch trio played a couple of songs from their debut album called Bullshit. Although I like the album, the style of their music and the fact that the vocals are sung in the native language, left a amateurish impression on me. The fact that barely 40 people took the effort to watch the opening act didn’t help either. The band left the stage ten minutes after I arrived, which means they only had thirty minutes of playing time.

Perzonal War
The lack of confidence of the opening act was well compensated by the following act, Perzonal War. The dynamic performance of these German metal rockers even got the modest crowd going. They left their bar stools and took the floor. The band played a selection of songs from different albums. The high quality of the tracks from their up-coming album Faces was somewhat in contrast with the older songs, which to me all seemed to lack some spirit. Perzonal War is a convincing band that definitely knows how to promote itself.

Manigance
This French six piece had the longest road to travel to Weert. Immediately after the band entered the stage it became obvious that the passion of these musicians is their true strength. The fact that the genre (melodic and classic hard rock) comes closest to my personal preferences and that I had read some rather positive reviews of the bands new album D’Un Autre Sang, caused for high personal expectations. I’m sorry to say that Manigance did not fulfill these expectations. On the one hand the sound engineer took too long to get the sound right; no easy job since there are six musicians and preparations are cut short to just twenty minutes. On the other hand the music was a bit too straight up for me.

Superfly 69
These Germans released an excellent album, called Dummy Of The Day about six months ago (there’s a review of the album in the REZ-archives). The rock ‘n roll, punkrock really hit it off in Weert. The performance was very dynamic and fun to watch. The charisma of vocalist Oliver Sidiropoulos fitted well to the power of the side-kick guitar players, Jens Bürger and Maag Bauer. Next time Superfly 69 performs in your neighborhood, don’t hesitate, go see this band!

Mennen
I was surprised to see that by the time Mennen entered the stage, the amount of people in the crowd had not increased that much. Not more than seventy five people took the effort to see the band in their home town. Knowing that at least half of these people were crew, members of the other bands and press, I can image the organizers being slightly disappointed. They should be disappointed since they clearly took a lot of time organizing this festival (a job well done) and the quality of the bands proved to be beyond doubt. Mennen played a selection of songs ranging from old Zinatra stuff, some covers and of course a lot of tracks from their new album Freakazoid, which was presented this evening. The sound, the lights and even the fireworks made this closing performance without a doubt the most professional one of the day.

(Review & Pics: Geert Oldenmenger)