Then God Forbid. It was pretty crowdy already, and when the ‘requiem for a dream’intro began, it was obvious a lot of people were coming for this band. I am not pretty familiar with this band, altough I know ‘Determination’. The presentation was pretty decent. It was funny to see how the mic of the singer almost sticked to his mouth, even when he wasn’t singing. Caliban had a better sound, now sometimes, I didn’t hear the vocalist too well. They played 40 minutes of technical metal with some breakdowns that were appreciated by some hardcore kids. Cool Stuff.

Machine Head. Finally. When they walked on stage, and began with the first tones of ‘Imperium’ the crowd immediately gone wild. Machine Head still have a large fanbase, that exists of harcorekids, metaldudes and nu-metal/alternative people. Altough they’ve made some nu-metallish records (Burning Red and Supercharger), a lot of people stay true to Machine Head. I think ‘Through the ashes..’ is for them. And live, they are at it’s best. Rob Flynn is a born entertainer and Phill Demmel had an cool communication with the audience by doing crazy faces/hand moves etc. A live band as live bands should be. I was surprised to hear ‘Days turn Blue to Gray’, but it’s the new single, so. Overall, they played a mixture of all their records. Songs like ‘Davidian’, ‘Old’, ‘Blood, sweat , tears’, ‘Bulldozer’, ‘Elegy’ and ‘Take my Scars’are some examples. Also suprisingly: ‘Burning Red’and ‘Descend the shades of night’. Some slow songs, that were played pretty well, but noticing the length of the songs, I would not have had problems with some older stuff from Burn My Eyes. But ok, they released 5 records , not everyone can be statisfied.

Summary: Machine Head still rocks. And still proves brutal metal can come with melody. With a lot of entertainment and good songs, I returned home with a statisfied feeling.

(Review: Friso Veltkamp
Pics: Marcia Gransbergen)