On January 19th, a triplet of Dutch (progressive) metal bands entertained a small but enthousiastic audience at Dynamo in Eindhoven (The Netherlands). Here’s a short recap, with some pictures.
CARTHAGO
After a 45 minute delay (someone had pulled the cables of the sound panel over diner, so the setup needed to be redone), Carthago kicked of with a first set. I had never heard Carthago before this evening, but was surprised in a positive way, despite the poor sound quality (somehow the voices got lost quite often in the guitar and drum noise).
They played a set of decent metal tracks, in a line up consisting of guitar, drums, bass, keybaords and two female vocalists. Highlight (for the band, and in terms of sound quality) was a version of the theme song of Phantom of the Opera, with Sun Caged singer Paul Adrian Villareal as the Phantom, joining the two ladies for a ‘triplet’.
Their MySpace is worth checking out – sound quality there is better than at Dynamo.
FEEDFORWARD
After changing the stage set up, Feedforward were next. This was the band I came for, after being in contact with their guitarist Mario van den Boogaerd concerning their inclusion in ProgArchives.com. When I heard their album for the first time in December, I was impressed by the quality of the recording and the musicianship of the band members. On this night, it all became more impressive. Singer Biejanka has a great and well-trained, powerful voice, which matches perfectly with the music produced by her for male companions.
The set contained a selection of the tracks from the album, an older track that apparently never made it to the album and two new tracks.
The second of these new tracks was played live only for the second time, and as Biejanka put it “The lyrics aren’t final, it has no title, but it does have a helicopter”. Indeed – halfway through keyboardist Jos produced a helicopter like sound – met with cheers. Near the end of the gig, the best news of all was presented to the audience: Feedforward are discussing a distribution deal for their album, which hopefully will result in a re-release and distribution in Europe and North America. “We will become famous rocks stars!”. Fingers crossed on a great band – again one to check out on their own web site, or on MySpace.
SUN CAGED
Closing act of the evening was Sun Caged. Another band I am not too familiar with, but after this night that is going to have to change. Lead guitarist Marcel Coenen seems to have 20 fingers instead of 10, what a great instrumentalist… As a bass amateur, I could also only be impressed by the technique and enthousiasm of bass guitarist Roel Vink. As if Jaco Pastorius came back to live to play prog metal.
Unfortunately, we had to leave after about half an hour into the set, but I’ll be seeing and hearing Sun Caged again later this year, I’m sure. And of course, they too have a MySpace page and a web site.
