When I first entered the club through a side door, first person to meet was actually Christophe Szpajdel – the Belgian guy most of you will know because of his hundreds of logos (Emperor, Graveland, Enthroned, Moonspell to name but a few) – and who appears anywhere and nowhere. But as I do, he meanwhile lives in the UK and he accompanies the UK-part of this package. The day before, they had played London and had a large audience, so the bands hoped for quite a few people in the Welsh capital. Their hopes shouldn’t be fulfilled. 

However, the first band LOOSING SUN didn’t earn any audience anyway. I don’t know who chose this band, a really poor Nu “Metal”-band as a support for a more Black Metal-orientated package but no one; really no one was watching them. And I think that most people were as annoyed as I was. I have never seen a single gig where not even a single person clapped his bands or yelled something at a band. I hope this was reason enough for them to split. 

A few minutes later – all bands used the same backline – Irish masters PRIMORDIAL wanted to bring ‘Gods To The Godless’. Accompanied by two session-musicians they played a furious 45 minutes set starting with the aforementioned song, followed by ‘Fallen To Ruin’. And although the band was still quite disappointed because so few people had attended, their performance was not to blame: PRIMORDIAL was as intense as always, I have never seen them performing badly, and with such songmaterial you cannot do much wrong anyway. While their albums are already a class of their own, their repetitive riffs and the fitting instrumental work simply build up a tension that carries you away. And Mr Nemtheanga living his lyrics as painful as always. ‘The Soul Must Sleep’, ‘Cast To The Pyre’, ‘The Burning Season’ – therefore concentrating on the two latest albums led to the obvious final: ‘To Enter Pagan’ from their one and only demo they released in 1993. Brilliant. I only hope to see them again on next year’s summer festivals. 

ENTHRONED and ROTTING CHRIST changed the headliner-position depending on in which country they actually were. While ENTHRONED headlined the Benelux-countries, ROTTING CHRIST did e.g. in the UK. So next to come were the Belgian Black Metallers. Honestly, I must say that I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t wear any corpsepaint at all because, as Lord Sabathan explained to me, they thought there was no need to do so for an audience of only 30 people (my guess). Thus I was witness of a one of the rare occasions where ENTHRONED played “naked”. Nonetheless, the set they played really surprised me in a positive way. Already their third song was ‘Tales From The Blackened Horde’ from their demo and more or less completely leaving out their bad efforts “Apocalypse Manifesto” and “Bestial Armours…”, which trapped them so much in the MARDUK-like “fast, faster, fastest”-corner. They played a varied set, which reminded me more of an old school Thrash Metal act than of a Black Metal act but bearing in mind Sabathan’s favour of this kind of music one shouldn’t be surprised. And if their live-performance was a hint at their new album, I should check it out because it seems to be quite a change to their monotonous predecessors. Their classic ‘Evil Church’ meant a good final to a good set. 

I unfortunately couldn’t watch ROTTING CHRIST until the end. The rather poor Welsh train-network – and it’s even worse on the weekend – made me leave the Mount Stuart after just a few songs. But from what I saw, also the Greek band wasn’t so enthusiastic about the small audience. Starting with ‘In Domine Sathana’ from their latest album “Genesis”, their performance was rather solid but far from spectacular. However, I must admit that I saw them for the first time, so I do not have any comparison. But with PRIMORDIAL and ENTHRONED as competitors they only finish third.  Just a final word: I must say that I really enjoyed it finally that there are packages with just three homogenous – more or less – Black Metal bands. Couldn’t we have this far more often instead of this massive nine bands serving-any-taste packages? At least I’d appreciate it.

Nhashi