My second day of the Eindhoven Metal Meeting started with Gaahls Wyrd. Gaahl, mostly known as the past Gorgoroth singer, created the project. The project is a mixture of tracks of Gorgoroth, God Seed and Trelldom, and this is how the set list looked like, too. I liked the show, because it was minimalist but still powerful with a good sound. Tracks like “Sign of an Open Eye”, “Carving a Giant” or “Alt Liv” made it really worth visiting this show. Awesome!
After eating a snack at the first floor, I walked back to the big hall and held my beer while seeing Tankard on stage. The hall was full of drinking people and many headbangers. I am not the biggest Tankard fan, but it was overall a cool atmosphere in there with nice people and a really good sound. It was fun to see them live. At least their (of course) last track “(Empty) Tankard” made me dance with my friends, haha nice!
Venom was my next subject on the list for that day. I had never seen them live on stage, so it was a special event for me. The hall was really full and it seemed that a big part of all visitors was there. It was a really awesome set list, a mixture of many albums of their career. But I did not recognize any tracks of their newest record ‘Avé’ from 2017. All in all, it was a really nice performance of the guys, minimalist and good. The audience had fun and the sound like the atmosphere were quite awesome, nice!
It was quite late and the last three bands (all black metal) of the evening were on the program.
The Great Old Ones, very mighty but harmonic, entered the stage and delighted just from the beginning of the show. The light show in the small hall was quite dark or mysterious (like the books of H. P. Lovecraft) and always appropriate to the special atmosphere of their tracks. This atmosphere was supported by a well-mixed sound and a well-chosen set list. Awesome!
After that, I went upstairs to see Master’s Hammer playing even if for a short time. I did not know many tracks of them, but the two tracks I heard were nice and it was fun to see the guys playing their music. Their appearance on stage was a bit motley, but I think this is however appropriate to their partial experimental music. The sound was nice, the tracks were interesting and it was a good performance of them overall.
The last artist of the festival was Auðn in the small hall. One conspicuous point about them is their outfit, because they wear suits instead of cliché long coats, big hoods, whatever and that is cool! Their performance on stage was a bit offish and the light show was relatively bright. I do not know why, but, that was however quite nice and appropriate. I really enjoyed the whole awesome show of the guys although it was nothing really special. At the end of the show, (I guess) the guys of The Great Old Ones came on stage and bowed out together with Auðn.
That was it, the festival is over. It were two nice days in Eindhoven at the venue Effenaar. Great Bands played at the festival, nice people were around there and the whole package of city, venue and festival is very, very good. Trust me, the whole atmosphere alone is still worth a visit. I had a lot of fun there and I will visit the festival next year for sure.
