Kataklysm, Septicflesh and Aborted marched in Europe and stopped on 8th January at Markthalle in Hamburg. I was curious about this combination of bands. Epic Septicflesh, brutal Aborted and Kataklym something in between.

First Band in the evening was Aborted. It started with “Hellbound” from Christopher Young, the title track of Hellraiser 2. Nice thing for the beginning! Then it continued with a tide of brain-melting drums, sawing riffs and beasty vocals. The Belgian were not be merciful to the crowd. One of the older songs “Meticulous Invagination” at first. The people in the venue began to wake up but the most of them behave like they watch TV, too bad for Aborted… they performed really well. But at the latest at their third song “Necrotic Manifesto” everyone in the venue had to decide if they wanted to be the sacrifice of the band or follow the band to be a butcher of souls, wording of singer Sven de Caluwe. More people began to headbang, it worked! We laughed a few times during the concert. This bloke eased the violence on stage with funny, ironic jokes about the audience and the bass player J.B. Van Der Wal. Of course, they played stuff of their brand-new EP “Termination Redux”: The title song and “Bound in Acrimony”. Really nice live songs to heat up the crowd! At the end they performed “The Saw and The Carnage done”, a really old song, but still good as well. Aborted was a very awesome band for the beginning. The band went like a train, especially the bass player headbanged as if this was his last time ever. It was a great fun with this guys.

Septicflesh was the next band as the co-headliner of the evening. An epic orchestral intro appeared and slid into “War in Heaven”. Oh man, what an amazing start of this part of the concert. Generally, they had a wonderful playlist of newer songs of the album “Titan” and some older ones from “The Great Mass” and especially “Communion”. All along songs like “Prototype”, “The Vampire from Nazareth” with powerful and epic parts Septicflesh is well known for. The epicness reached its peak at the end with “Anubis” and “Prometheus”. I admit that I cannot write much more about them. They performed their set with sobriety and didn’t talk to the crowd too much. They just did their stuff but in my opinion it’s appropriate to the music the play. Epic, brutal, groovy and serious like I expected. A different interaction would be a bit strange in my opinion, so all about Septicflesh was very fine.

So, it was the time for the headliner Kataklysm. Seriously, the band delighted after the first second with “Breaching the Asylum” from their newest album “Of Ghost and Gods” and the audience went berserk. At this moment the audience was eventual awake. It seems the people in the venue waited especially for Kataklysm. Wall of death, mosh pits and headbangers everywhere… amazing atmosphere! Singer Maurizio commented this with “I’m joyful that Death Metal isn’t dead! You’re awesome!” A thing I was impressed of was that Kataklysm is still authentic, every single time they play live. Jean-Francois Dagenais is the only guitarist, so they play only one guitar on stage. The song “The Black Sheep” for example: In the Chorus is a rhythm and a lead guitar recorded but live they played the lead guitar only. This is always a new experience in contrast to the recorded stuff. There’re trusty to their music style for a long time. Older, classical ones like “Manipulator of Souls”, “Where the Enemy Sleeps” or “The Ambassador of Pain” were played also. Kataklysm still keep the past in the present time proudly, quite right! As a surprise, Maurizio announced an older song they never played before on stage: “Open Scars” from the album “In the Arms of Devastation”… still 10 years old as the ending of the concert. Better late than never? Hell, yeah! I have the feeling that this whole stuff follows a golden thread to the new stuff of the newest album “Of Ghost and Gods”. The played many songs of the album. It wasn’t a big surprise because this was the tour for it of course. Songs like “Thy Serpents Tongue” or “Soul Destroyer” e.g. made the crowd crazy. The real ending as the encore was old school again. They end up with the awesome songs “In Shadows & Dust” and “Crippled & Broken”, gang shouts inclusive (again!). Awesome! Kataklysm showed an impressive performance and played a really awesome setlist. It was a powerful, diverting journey about 15 awesome years of Kataklysm.

The evening was brutal, epic, powerful and groovy concurrently. There’s no more to talk about. It was a pity that the crowd went really crazy at Kataklysm only. Maybe Septicflesh as second band withdraw the drive Aborted build up. Whatever, it was an amazing evening with amazing bands in an amazing city!