But that wasn’t the real reason I visited the festival. This year’s programme was quite spectacular with bands like Vengeance, AUS Nirvana and of course After Forever. Unfortunately I missed Lime (sorry guys).

For me the first band was Icaros, a young Dutch metal band with a female singer. The band fits well with the music of After Forever as the instrumental intro was quite bombastic. Linda’s voice wasn’t great during the first two songs though. At ‘Wings to Freedom’ she got a little bit less nervous and her singing became better, but her voice couldn’t quite compete with the power of the band. I think this is just a matter of time and exercise; the band is quite inexperienced, I think and hope we will hear more of this band. They are recording a demo that will be released this year.

After Icaros, the stage was free for the southern rock band The 190’s, and they surely know how to rock. With a lot of conviction they launch one after another heavy stoner rock songs into the audience. Most of the songs were covers, but with ‘Black Blood’ they have also a song of their own. And a really heavy one, that is. I wonder why the band doesn’t write more songs. The Black Sabbath cover ‘Children Of The Grave’ fits well with the instrumental power of the band, though the vocals of Willem van den Heuvel are a bit too rough for this song. For me it wasn’t the best song of the set list. The cover ‘Black Woman (Of Unida)’ was the last song of their show, a tough and heavy rock song with a great guitar solo by Jeroen Rijkers.

At 17:45 Astrosonic ascended the stage for a memorial gig, being the last show together with bass player Erik the Vocht. From the first song ‘Red Unz’ it was clear Astronotic wanted to play a great show. Especially the song ‘Ego Boost’ was superb, great metal with an incredible guitar solo. The new bass guitar player, Robert Jan Gruijthuizen, played his first song with the band in public. With a long (absolutely not boring!) instrumental intro the band played the last song, the impressive psychedelic ‘Soul Searcher’, by which the band proved they still have a great future. Erik the Vocht definitely had a beautiful last gig with Astrosonic.

The next band was good old Vengeance, and just like their gig in Tilburg (Nov.-2006) the band did what they had to do, namely playing a show with a lot of humour with front man Leon Goewie taking the leading part. The set list was a combination of songs of the latest album Back In The Ring and the older songs. Sometimes the sound wasn’t that great (the solo of ‘Power Of The Rock’ wasn’t audible) but who cared, with a set list of songs like ‘Dreamworld’, the Osmonds cover ‘Crazy horses’ and ‘Arabia’ the band made it clear, Vengeance is back in the ring indeed. Of course Goewie gave himself a rock and roll shower, a water-shower and a Sisi-shower.

After delicious French fried potatoes from the Belgium stand it was time for the Australian band AUS Nirvana, a Nirvana cover band. The day before the band had a great party, so the performance wasn’t the best they ever did. The consequences of that party were noticeable during the first part of the show, only in the second part the band played better. The set list however was a true recognition of the Nirvana area of Curt Cobain with songs like ‘Negative Creep’, ‘Dive’, ‘Come As You Are’, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’. The audience had a great time.

Finally at 22.15 it was the moment many visitors (including me) had been waiting for all day: After Forever. During the whole festival most members of the band were amongst the audience and I took that opportunity to talk with Joost (keyboards) and Sander (guitar and grunts) about the upcoming album. They told me that the band wouldn’t play any new songs (release date: April 22nd, watch out that day!!). The band played some old songs they hadn’t played on shows for a long time like ‘Emphasis’ of the Deceiver album. Every album was present from Enter to Remagine, the performance was great as usual. An absolutely great headliner, that’s for sure. The only song that I liked less was the Heart cover ‘All Alone’, which I didn’t feel to fit very well with the set-list. On the other hand the performance of ‘Forlorn Hope’ was brilliant, goose-flesh. After an impressive show of nearly two hours they left the stage. For me it is still one of the best Dutch metal bands of this moment.

The toughest part of the evening was put aside for Roadpizza, they had to play after a very powerful gig of After Forever with a big part of the audience leaving the hall. The band did what they had to do: playing some good guitar rock and roll. After about ten minutes Roadpizza entertained most of the people with a show full of energy with only a few attributes in contrary to the After Forever show, a golden contrabass, an old fashion microphone, a little drum kid and a red guitar. I was happy I didn’t leave after the After Forever show.

All-in-one, it was a great festival with a great organisation. Next year if the line-up of Monsters of Mariaheide is that great again, I will be there. Special thanks to Joost of "Festivalinfo.nl" for the great photo`s.

(Review & Pics: Ralph Vermeere)