Baroeg is still on tour, but works are progressing well. For Dutch Doom Day this meant the venue was Bibelot Dordrecht this year. I attended DDD before. Usually because of one band I really want to see and the rest can surprise me. The comfort style within doom metal for me is the eighties Black Sabbath and the Scandinavian stream of bands following that path (Candlemass, Sorcerer, Krux). Today's line-up might all have been doom, not one band sounded like any other, so lack of variatiomn was no issue. I am leaving for Brazil tomorrow, so I had to get some stuff still and missed as a result opening band Remembrace. Since they are the only Dutch band ob the bill, I guess I can see them still somewhere some day.
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So upon arrival the first Chilean band was about to begin. The event information said progressive doom, so my interest was there. Now in reality the progressive part came more to the fore in songs building up. slowly with some gothic vocals over same. Arriving at the vocals I must mention the elephant in the hall. Vocals came from tape. Mostly backing vocals, but at time also lead vocals. This made it hard to tell what was sung live and what was not. This distracted quite a bit for me. Maybe I got used to it throughout their set, but I liked their last two songs best.
Next band were High Warden from Germany and people more in the now within doom than I (Vitus Frank and Rene) told me this would be good. The information said slow Heavy Metal and that was a good description. A trio with flying V guitar made them look heavy metal to start with and I did like their set. They have only one CD and one demo, so I guess we got most of their songs. At times increasing the pace made their set varied enough and they went down pretty well indeed with those in. A good band that got us pleased into the one hour break to catch some food, which resulted in a packed nearby snackbar under Dordrecht's windmill.
After the break it was back to Chile for Mourners Lament. Doom/Death Metal they play and very well so. This became fast the first absolute high of the festival for me. Their long songs were building up to epic highs and the vocals grunted over the riffs with the occassional clean lines. The best about doom is when bands manage to get you under their spell and you stand banging slowly watching it all come over you. This was the case here and I would get a CD afterwards to show my appreciation. Halfway the set vocalist Alfredo asked if anyone spoke Spanish. This before playing their Spanish language song Ocaso. I kept quiet a my Portanyol does not count as Spanish. Meanwhile I am planning to improve my Spanish the coming months, so I got their last album and am now reading along with Ocaso playing on CD. A great band they were and I hope their European tour is a success.
And than yet again for something completely different. Pantheist the band build around the Greek Belgian from Wales (thanks Rene) The main man stood centre stage behind his keyboards and a female vocalist stood next to him in support. This was very different, but also pretty hard to digest for me. First I am not the biggest fan of female operatic voices. Further their music was very slow indeed and finally my struggle to enjoy bands after just being blast away by the previous band. So I gave Pantheist some four songs before heading to the bar downstairs, where I could sit to regain forces for the headliner.
Headliner today were In the Woods... from Norway. Technically not a doom band as they started black metal and now lean towards the more progressive side with melodic death metal leanings to. I have only one of their older albums, but this year's Otra to me is an absolute winner. Seven songs where the catchiness of chorusses is key. At times they sound to me like mixing Swallow the Sun with Voyager. But they are older than them, so let's give them their own credit for sounding so fine. At least on album that is. Live they encountered some issues. Ending soundcheck on time at 21:45 they disappeared for 15 minutes to come back at ten and kick off sounding a bit messy. Throughout their set this would remain the case in waves to me. Bass and drums were often too loud in comparison with guitars, keyboards and vocals. Luckily the songs themselves are strong enough to still give us a great show. This included four songs of Otra, where vocalist Bernt proved he has no problems with either the harsher vocals nor the epical clean ones. So I loved their set, but sound made it not one of the annual highlights for me. Still a good closer of one doom fine day in Dordrecht. Thanks to those putting this together and the bands entertaining us in so many different forms of doom. Next year back in Baroeg I hope to be there again as well.
