The first concert of this year is a real fully packed sold out venue filled with a lot of our Dutch metal lovers. The crowd is excited to see Obituary since they were not in the neighbourhood for a long time. The new Obituary album “Xecutioner’s Return” is the reason for starting this tour and since their reunion they made a very convincing comeback. The last album proves that these Florida boys are still favourites among the various metal lovers in Holland and its surroundings.
Avatar, from Gothenburg, Sweden, starts this first day of the tour and you can tell they are a bit nervous on stage. Not surprising at all since they are a new younger band and not a surprise when you have to open on one of their first big tours with older sister Holy Moses and big brother Obituary. Avatar did a nice job with a nice mixture of melodic styles and death metal.
The sound of Avatar is sometimes messy and chaotic but after a few songs they are building themselves up and we get a nice "Gothenburg" death metal treat. Their new album "Schlacht" will be released soon. The first album they released was "Thoughts of no Tomorrow" and made an impression by a lot of bands like Obituary and they put them in the spotlight by inviting them on this tour.
http://www.myspace.com/avataronline

Holy Moses is an older band with female vocalist Sabina Classen. This woman of this speed/thrash band still rocks but in my opinion the whole Moses is at its end. The band started in 1980 and is well known and positive. The typical thrash songs and her brutal voice makes it a nice background band for this night and everybody starts to warm up for Obituary. The crowds reaction on them is also a bit lame and I have seen them definitely in better times. On the German festivals for example!
http://www.myspace.com/holymosesgermany

Obituary begins and plays "Find the Arise" with a good vibe. The crowd is already sweaty and ready for the Florida death metal boys and with the start of the first song people get real excited.
Frontman John Tardy looks very energetic and fresh. Frank Watkins, who broke his rib two months ago, plays the bass like nothing happened and gives a good groovy tune. Donald Tardy swings his sticks and Trevor Peres is the good ol redneck everybody wants to see and hear him play his typical riffs that make the songs as brilliant as they often are. The songs are brutal and varied from the long range of albums Obituary made the last decades. The new album "Xecutioner’s Return" consists of 11 tracks and is released by Candlelight records. They played a few songs of that record in this set and those songs seem to slow down the pace a bit but in the end they made the whole crowd very happy when the finishing touch which came by the death-metal evergreen of the 90-ties; "Slowly we Rot". A great night, with a new beer drinking record for this venue during this show! Well done!
http://www.myspace.com/obituary

Picture taken by Bert Harmsen, for more pictures of this evening see www.metalshots.com