Xathrites, Askeesi & Gogmagore - Musicon The Hague, 22 October 2024

Musicon went exotic and black this Tuesday night. Never before did I see a band from Iraq or Georgia (the country not the US State).  That would change this evening. So where I might have been in doubt with Reb Beach playing de Boerderij with a set of Whitesnake, Winger & Dokken songs I opted for the dark and the obscure and the exotic. 

Openers were not all that exotic as these six facepainted guys are from The Netherlands. Gogmagore played Black Metal with two vocalists. The huge amount of effects over the vocals, made it at times hard to follow for me, but they opened the evening heaviest of them all.

Next on were Askeesi, but they were not. Xathrites played first. So while I thought that I was watching a band from Georgia, Rene halfway told us that this was Xathrites. Well the banner already told us so, but that does not always mean everything. I did see the documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad from 2007, which follows the hard life as band of Acrassicauda. So that alone was reason enough for me to attend. I mean metalbands in the Middle East don't have it easy. Now located elsewhere the main issue was that the band missed one founding member tonight. So a tape helped as he was stuck in a country that is not his own, they stated enigmatically. The poster said Depressive Black Metal, but I heard mostly Post-Rock. Ok the vocals were Black Metal-ish mostly. I liked their set and bought their last CD in support. Only one guy actually was from Iraq tonight, but I consider that white spot on my metal world map covered by now.

The headliner of the evening were Askeesi. They appeared in brown monk's robes, but being from Georgia they got away with that for me. No eye contact throughout, as the hoodies covered all eyes. The vocalist was female, but her grunt and scream was deep enough. Again the advert said Black Metal, while Post rock played a large part. Three guitars put a wall of sound and the songs went the distance. With the Iraqi's being handicapped, it made sense this lot finished the night. A good performance closed another fine evening in Musicon, where I knew that I would meet some known faces, but Italian Alessio being on tour forever was a nice surprise.