Witherfall touring Europe as headliner, after releasing four fine full lenghts and one EP. I was thrilled when seeing them being announced at de Boerderij. While entering de Boerderij this autumn evening we soon found that not all that many people were as enthusiastic. Initially even scary empty it did fill up a bit, but we could hardly speak of a half full floor (nor of a half empty one). Strangely I knew of many people who went, but it was the people I don't know who were missing out. I could literally name over 50% of the people in tonight. So my early thoughts of right band wrong venue were confirmed. De Boerderij was a progrock temple, nowadays turned into a cover and tribte band venue mostly. Further they decided for reasons understood by noone to delay the start when one support band dropped out due to illness. So having your headliiner start Sunday night at 21:45 only, which easily could have been 20:45might have cost a few fans too. But enough bitching about, did we get a good evening?, after all that is what we came for.
Now that Signum Reis had to cancel we only got Mystery Blue to warm us up. I had never heard of this band before, but just read they released their first demo in 1981 already. Eighties metal from France makes me thnk of Trust, Sortilege or Satan Jokers maybe, but not this band. They played a standard straight forward kind of Heavy Metal. Guitars were fine, but the many requests for audience participatioon, when not many seemed bothered was a bit much. Well with so many known faces in tonight, time flew by anyway.
After setting up and tuning their instruments themselves Witherfall came on and gave us Tempest. Joseph Michael confirming he is among the best voices in metal and Jake Dreyer also proving to be among the major shredders of recent years. If we than see the rest of the band also being of the top level all seemed good. Only issue for me was the sound. De Boerderij was known for an impeccable sound, well this was not the case tonight. I felt at times it sounded a bit blurry, with no clear definitions. Not in a way that it would disturb my show and it turned bad, but it could have blown us harder away if clearer in the end. Now I saw setlists passing by on FB before, so we knew what to expect. Not really though as they changed the order and went for the Ceremony of Fire as closer. In a way especially Alex was happy with this shift. We agreed that Vintage is possibly their best song with it's beautiful and emotional ending in the Travel on My Friend part. Now he needed to get a last train home, fearing to miss this highlight, at the very end. Well Witherfall now put it at the end of the regular set before returning with Shadows and Ceremony in an encore (Sorry to inform Andy no .. And They All Blew Away) So everybody pleased and now hoping that this tour brought them some new fans. The ProgPower visitors who attended all agreed that Witherfall would fit fine. Than again those who attended were all of the generation who attended some 25/24 years ago already and like their progmetal being metal. For me seeing Witherfall for the first time full out after an acoustic first some years ago was a joy. Such a great band bringing their awesome songs to us. Still if this evening would have been in nearby Musicon or Nobel it could have been even better and busier by regulars checking out any metal band. Now curious what colour the next album sleeve shall bring us and when they tour Europe again.