Some incoherent words to this years Brutal Assault (no. 12).
Thursday:
After a day and night of total drunkenness, Thursday morning hurt. First three bands were a no see then. Leng Tche was the first one at 16:30 and it was one of the highlights of the fest, great show, stage presence. Then again some bands passed without my notice (Im sorry Aborted was one of them), and I returned to see the end of Belphegor. Very decent performance I must say, although I dont really like this band that much. Dismember were next, and it was one of the top 3 gigs for me. I dont really know the songs that well, mind you, but the show the band pulled off was immense. This was all feeling and loads of great great death metal. When I saw the guys so happy on stage and getting excellent feedback, I almost cried. Awesome! All That Remains and Root then passed unnoticed, and I returned to see the mighty Suffocation. Again a great show, stage presence, some technical problems, but it was great to see this band live for the first time (like with most of the headliners). Then came what I was hoping will be the top gig for me - DT. Im not really an old DT material freak, but the audience had probably expected something else. I enjoyed the show a lot, the new material sounds excellent, and especially Blind at Heart and Inside the Particle Storm brought shivers. Both Mikaels did what they could to really rock away, but the rest of the band was too static. I dont know, Niklas and Martin seemed not to care much really. Punish My Heaven was superb, and the difference really struck me for the first time - although its not one of my top favourites from DT, it was easily the best song of the gig. Somehow the different songwriting patterns DT is fond of now stood out as mediocre compared to PMH, which was a tornado. The New Build as the closing track was perfect as well, I really needed those blastbeats to feel the energy I hoped to feel throughout the whole gig. After DT came DHG, but after 3 songs I went to sleep.
Friday:
Opitz at 10 am, and the name of the band fitted (opica (read opitza) means hangover in Slovak). Excellent grind project of Puty (ex-Contrastic, Uprise). Outburst were sort of funny, a nice mixture of power metal and gothenburgh death. I didnt see Pigsty. Ador Dorath is probably the best Czech atmo black band, and they proved it on stage. Superb! Le Scrawl came next - if you dont know the band, its a mixture of grind core and jazz, funky and whatever other style you can think of. Extremely funny and cool at first, but then you recognized the pattern, and it got a bit boring. Uprise were fucking great. Czech grind is the best in the world. From the bands I saw on Friday Ill mention Depresy from my home town - the new stuff sounded excellent, but they got only lousy 25 minutes, too bad. Black Dahlia Murder surprised me in a good way, didnt expect such a wonderful mess. Cynic - now this was supposed to be so cool, but it wasnt. Masvidal seems to have undergone some serious trauma, because those sampled esoteric preachings in between the songs were too much. The gig lacked balls, it was way too robotic for my taste (or spacy?). Katatonia was great, unfortunately I caught only a few songs. Pain was worse than a dogs puke. Soulfly ditto. So the best was saved for last. Two totally different bands, two perfect shows. Heamorrhage and Enslaved. We came dressed as doctors to H, and it was real fun in the mosh pit. Enslaved kicked off with Path to Vanir, then Fusion of Sense and Earth - awesome sound, great performance. Among others they played Ruun, Isa, Return to Yggdrasill, Jotunblod and Slaget I Skoden Bortenfor. As you can imagine, the last one was a total massacre.
Saturday:
The first band worth mentioning is Excrementory Grindfuckers. Hell of a laugh, great grind core. The Final Grinddown was a side-splitter. The other worth the while was Gadget. Guys are already our friends, their grind is excellent. If you loved Nasum, youll love Gadget. Misanthrope were cool as always, even played some stuff from 1666 and Visionnaire, really enjoyed them. Zyklon was fucking boring, the worst surprise for me at this fest. Keep of Kalessin were quite the opposite. Excellent performance, Armada was the core of the setlist. If these guys learn that the bass drums are ok, but shouldnt really drown the rest of the band and club you to death, their shows will be a real treat. And then came the real stars of the festival. First one was Immolation. When I listen to this band on CD, I cant listen to the whole album at once, its so fucking complicated and weird. Ive never seen them live, so I wondered what the hell they were going to do. Well, they kicked us all to a small pile of goo. Perfection! And the really best was yet to come next. Madder Mortem. Ive waited for so long to see them live! When entering the stage during My Name is Silence (intro was Cold Stone) Agnete tripped and almost fell. I thought "Yeah, with my luck now shell break her leg and goodbye", but thank goodness nothing happened. Breaker of Worlds, Rust Cleansing, Changeling, M for Malice, Necropol Lit etc., I was in heaven! Vader were next, and I dont have to tell you that crazy Polish fans (who formed the majority at this fest) went completely nuts. Vader pulled off a fantastic concert, the new drummer Darray is a crazy motherfucker. Again I was surprised how good the new material sounds live. I guess thats what gigs are for, eh? I saw Satyricon in Prague last year, and it was a blast. This time they started their gig and the only thing we heard was the noise from their monitors. The band rocked away and the audience was just staring and grinning. Then it all got well, and from the 3rd song the sound was excellent. Satyricon are fantastic live, they played Now, Diabolical; Pentagram Burns, K.I.N.G., Nemesis Divina, Mother North, Fuel for Hatred etc. The only thing I missed was Supersonic Journey. The remaining bands were Dying Fetus, Onslaught and Red Harvest. And Dying Fetus simply destroyed everything. The new band basically, because the only founding member is John Gallagher, is fantastic. The drummer was a inhuman machine, as the rest of the band. I was prepared for technical brutality, but didnt expect technical excellence and perfection with unstoppable brutal force. The moments where both guitarists and the bass player played arpeggios were priceless. The best band of Brutal Assault 2007. Onslaught were a joke, and Red Harvest couldnt keep me awake enough to watch the whole gig.
I think this festival will become one of the largest festivals in Europe, because it already is one of the best. The new area was great (an old fort from C19). The system of two stages next to each other, where one plays and the other has a sound check, proved best. Sometimes it was hard to walk fast to the other gig, but there were no backlags as with previous years.