Godflesh
So I was able to catch the last 3 songs of the industrial gods. It was good to see them live again (after a very long time) but the volume wasn’t at Godflesh level and it looked like someone forgot to put out the lights. Guess there hasn’t changed much in all those years of (rock) shows where the support act is always the changeling. I saw Godflesh again 2 days after the Tilburg show and there everything was just all right: 45 minutes of industrial sludge.

Devin Townsend
Apparently billed as Strapping Young Lad, most songs were shot at SYL-speed into the audience. The whole band was having a go at it and so we saw another excellent show of Devin, Jed, Byron and of course Gene. It stays amazing how he drums, just awesome.

Devin started of with “Truth” from the “Infinity”-album and that was one of the very few Devin songs, most of it was Strapping Young Lad. Like the following “All Hail The New Flesh”, “Oh My Fucking God”, “S.Y.L.” and “In The Rainy Season”.

After that it was time for some slower songs and we were slapped with “Seventh Wave” (from Ocean Machine), “Earth Day” (from Terria) and “Namaste” (from Physicist). The final bang was SYL’s “Detox”. After some 45 minutes it was over and the smile didn’t get of my face for the rest of that evening.

Fear Factory
It’s just that the grin couldn’t be wider but otherwise FF would have taken care of that. They played rather a lot of new songs (“What Will Become”, “Damaged”, “Digimortal”, “Linchpin”, “No One”) so some of the older hits (Resurrection was left out to much discontent of your photographer).

But there were still “Shock”, “Edgecrusher” and “Self Bias Resistor” and the “oldie” Scapegoat. There was even a little surprise in Flashpoint (off the Demanufacture-album).

The FF performance was again incredible, a lot of movement on the stage (and in the audience!) and a great interaction with the audience. A role model for a lot of other bands.

Only minus stays the melodic part of the vocals. I also noticed that in April of this year in the Tivoli show but although tonight it was much better it still sounds unnatural and forced. I’m curious how long Burton will keep this up. Especially because the grunts are better and better. Perhaps they should take a retro trip on their next album, take us back to 1992?!?

But hey, what am I nagging about? Show was great and FF stays one of the best bands in the genre so I had a top evening.

(Review: Jan Geert Koops
Pics: Marcia Gransbergen)