With the volume a little on the soft side, Waterdown’s songs can be enjoyed in detail. This unravels a large number of beautiful melodies and powerful vocal lines sung by both singers, Ingo Rieser and Marcel Bischoff, resulting in a nice balance between clean sung vocal lines and screaming outbursts.

With their album ‘Never kill the boy on the first date’ out on Victory Records this band is well equipped to conquer the world.

Songs like ‘From a different angle’ and ‘We’re still here’ are wallowed in dynamics and conviction. A lot of stage action by all the band members makes this set not only nice for the ears but also for the eyes. Too bad the audience isn’t familiar with Waterdown.

But believe me, when these guys return to Eindhoven in the future they’ll be bigger, better and more than just the support act.

Rise Against
Next on tonight’s line up is Rise Against. A quartet from Chicago with ties to 88 Fingers Louie who has released their album ‘The Unraveling’ on Fat Wreck Records. Their amalgamated mix of punk and melodic hardcore sounds pretty raw and unpolished.

Vocalist Tim McIlrath starts with furious shouts and rants but loses some of that power as the gig moves on to the end. Too bad the background is lost in the mix during the entire show. Unfortunately I’m not familiar with their work but no matter how hard Rise Against tries to break down the barriers, all their attempts seem to fail.

And although there’s nothing to complain about the musicianship and performance in general, today they couldn’t convince me.

Sick of it all
Kicking off like a hurricane, that’s Sick Of It All. From the first minute on, it’s clear for which band most people are here tonight. With these guys you just can’t go wrong, they are born to perform. This is a no-attitude outfit with only one mission and that’s to give the audience a fantastic time.

The first few songs suffered from too much volume, which got better as the show went along. The always-sympathetic Lou Kohler interacts with the audience in a very nice way, playing the Braveheart game (you had to be there) to ohohoho-choirs with everybody on stage. He gets paid back for that with a great crowd response.

Eindhoven definitely knows how to rock. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a crowd get off the way they did tonight. They had every reason too. Sick Of It All delivers us fantastic versions of all their ‘hits’ and ‘anthems’ like ‘Built to Last’, ‘Injustice System’, ‘Maladjusted’ and ‘District’.

The show is a nice 65 minute mix of old school songs and the more modern work from their last two albums, keeping the album ‘Scratch the surface’ nicely in the middle.

Pete Kohler runs, jumps and spins on the stage like an acrobat, still playing every chord and note perfectly. This guy makes miles on the small stage, unbelievable. During the song ‘Step Down’ the show peaks with legs, arms and body’s flying all over the place.

Two extra’s on top of an evening with great hardcore, the way we all like it the best. Watch out for Sick Of It All’s upcoming live album that will be released on Fat Wreck this summer.

(Review: Marc Lochs
Pics: Sebastien Sam)