Rockezine.com concert review for Pro-Pain on Sep 20, 2004 in the Doornroosje/Nijmegen

Pro-Pain

Doornroosje-Nijmegen

Sep 20, 2004

I can imagine there are certain ways to spend a rainy Monday evening. You can, for instance, watch some shitty soap opera or another crappy TV-show. On the other hand, you can go to a concert. And not just any concert, no sir, a Pro-Pain concert. And everybody knows how energetic that sort of show can get.

Redrum Inc.
When I was entering Doornroosje, I noticed that the French guys from Disturb weren’t going to open this hardcore evening. The reason is still unknown, but the band was replaced by two other bands, Redrum Inc. and Postmortem. Redrum Inc. is a German band. They were formed in 1999 and have since then been sharing the stage with a lot of bands. The band is influenced by a lot of different styles, so they’re not really classifiable as a hardcore band. I noticed some metal, stoner and old school hardcore. The sound was pretty good for an opening act. My experience is that the first act sounds shitty very often. Not tonight though; the sound was clear and the band’s stage performance was very good. Front man Michael Dohmen jumped across the stage and had a good interaction with the crowd. After 30 minutes of good music, the crowd was warmed up for the next band.

Postmortem
After a quick backline change, the second band of the evening kicked off. Postmortem is, just like Redrum Inc., a German band, hailing from the Berlin region. At first I thought it was an American band because of the good English of vocalist Putz Malone. Anyway, these five German guys sure know how to entertain the crowd. The energetic music really turned the crowd on and Putz Malone tried hard to involve the crowd into the show. It was a pity though that the volume was way too loud. It made the death & roll of Postmortem noisy and untidy.

Carnal Forge
A couple of weeks before they went on tour with Pro-Pain, Carnal Forge’s former vocalist Jonas Kjellgren quit the band. The band found a replacement in Leech front man Jens C. Mortensen. Mortensen is not unknown to some members of Carnal Forge, because of the fact that three band members are also in Leech. The mix between Bay-Area thrash, Swedish melodic death and hardcore was very popular tonight, given the fact that there were more people than during the first two bands. And the crowd was quite right about showing up. The show and the band were both tight as hell. And if the volume wasn’t too high, it would have been a perfect show. Thus, my only point if criticism was the volume. Mortensen was hardly hearable when screaming his high-pitched parts.

Pro-Pain
And then finally the band everybody came for gets on stage! This metal-core machine is famous for their energetic live shows and tonight it was as great as usual. Pro-Pain never plays a bad show. From the first tones to the last chords the crowd went completely berserk. After an hour or so, the band played their last song and got of the stage. But because of the ongoing chants in the crowd (“WE WANT MORE!”) the band came back for a three song encore. A Discharge cover “Never Again”, ”Foul Taste Of Freedom” and “Death On The Dance Floor” were three perfect songs to end this rainy evening!

(Review: Lars van Bergen
Pics: Marcia Gransbergen)