Er, four bands.
I missed most of the first band, Okera, but what I heard was pretty good, couple of long songs, midpaced with a nice groove throughout.
Second band, Woods of Suicide, a three piece, started off sounding like funeral doom with very slow, deep, noisy passages overlaid with harsh shrieks. Slowly (slowly..) built up, but funnily enough even when they seemed to have some fair speed going they still sounded quite slow. There was not a moment of silence from when they started to when they finished. All up, one of the more unusual bands I've heard live. Reminded me in parts of Judas Iscariot and Wolves of the Throne Room, not that they sounded a lot like either. Also reminded me of a very harsh, bleak black metal noise duo playing perhaps at the hifi (after Chalice and others) with video projected in the background; mostly I think I'm reminded of that purely because it was also rather unusual.
Arbrynth were third, they've got some great songs, I'm surprised I remembered them though from the half gig I've seen before - the raven, river's edge, the one with 'what have we become' (?). They also debuted a new song which was fantastic, loved the drumming and the female vox in the middle passage, though elsewhere they were almost inaudible.
Rainshadow closed the night with a much more mellow sound, clean vocals throughout. General room resonances became much more apparent though with a quieter sound; even then, it was really only on the song Ghosts that it was very noticeable. Cool cover of anathema near the end, and I can't remember if Storm was the closer or the penultimate song - either way, the last song went off and was a great ending to the set.
I've only been to the arthouse once before, a couple of months ago perhaps, and this time it seemed quite packed.
So a decent amount of variety and good bands all round, not to mention this one particularly hot chick ...
