A Tuesday evening in the middle of the month is not a good day to start. And the fact that it's directly after all vacations, sure didn't make things better. But still, it's quite annoying that people prefer to stay home and watch TV rather than go out and see some good bands. And the ones who actually showed up dropped slowly in during the night.

At 7:30 pm it was gig time and SCAAR looked a bit whatever and kick-started their set with Helltrip and when the sound was straightened out the music developed into a really nice groove. US Metal-Core is absolutely better with a Swedish touch. Perhaps the touch of Nordic Doom-gene cooled off the Aggro a bit. And that made SCAAR really interesting; evil Zero The Hero-riffing mixed with PANTERA. When they stuck to that, SCAAR were the best. When they let Doomier influences take over they're a killer band; when it turned over to Blast-Beats it was not as interesting. The identity and soul in the music disappeared. It could be the venue and equipment that weren't fit to that kind of treatment too but to me they fell flat when they speeded up their tempo. To my surprise vocalist Henrik Englund (from SCARPOINT) was just a stand in for these few gigs. He did a great job, and I would never have guessed this was the case.

S-CORE from Strasbourg, France was second band on the bill; a band that I had never heard of until I saw the ad's for the gig. After a little shy start they let the groove flow freely. My expectations of their music when looking at them was absolutely Metal Core. And in some way that was right but they had a lot more in them. A touch of an Industrial RAMMSTEIN-drive but the thing that was the most catching was some really odd riffing; most prominent in Requiem For A Dying Race. The only bands I could compare it to are some really obscure Swedish ones, like STILLBORN or JESUS EXCERSICE. Their performance could have been better balanced, vocalist Ket didn't need to do especially much, his long reddish dreadlocks did the job for him and the guitar player Thomas Ketter was hardly visible on the right flank. On the left flank the class-clowns (guitar player Bertrand and bass player Myron) were having a party, they spread energy enough to feed the whole crowd. From an overall perspective I really liked S-CORE, their music was really interesting and creative and different from most other bands out there.

Well, American Metal Core is about as much my favorite type of music as The New Wave Of Glam so I was really pleasantly surprised that I actually appreciated all bands on the bill that night. California outfit VENGINCE was pure Gangsta_Rap Metal in the vein's of BODY COUNT or RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE. There's no doubt they had full control of what they were doing, the music was played with perfection and with an attitude and sense of humor rarely seen in bands of this size. That's sort of a contradiction towards the hard-hitting attitude of the Rap-influences but it worked. And without it, VENGINCE would have appeared as really silly. It was still quite hard to believe a band that looks like a put-together than a unit. Vocalist Relentless fitted right into their musical genre with big muscles and a loose way of dressing and relaxed moves while guitarist Dank (aka John Winters) looks like a true guitar hero with his Ibanez UV-7 that's not at all in line with VENGINCE's musical style. But apart from their appearances and mismatches in styling there's nothing to complain about at all. As It All Sours from this year's release with the same title draws more towards Death Metal and sounded very promising. And the newer material was absolutely more in my taste.

I can understand that a band like PRO-PAIN wasn't too excited about neither the venue nor the crowd because they seemed a little stale. They still sounded awesome, super-tight and everything played with perfection and that was absolutely a trademark for the whole night. All bands did great musically. But PRO-PAIN has been around for 16 years now and they're probably used to little bigger venues than Tantogarden. I mean, the mosh-pits are more impressive with a couple of hundred people. They got a mosh-pit here too but only with a couple people. The ones that actually showed up gave it all, jumping around and bouncing into each other and really tried to get the bi-sitters going, some joined in and some looked really annoyed. That's a strange behavior on a concert of this type. How the hell can you expect to stand and just watch a few feet away from the stage when a Thrash-band is on it? PRO-PAIN sure has it all, the Old-School really raw parts as well as the slower heavy groove but I wonder if Gary Meskil and his crew still is as angry and can stand by their lyrics. Because that first impression lasted through the whole show, they didn't move me especially much. Their performance was flawless but I think they also gave a laid back and lazy show.

(photos by The Truth Hurts Erika)

SCAAR

S-CORE

VENGINCE

PRO-PAIN