After missing the correct gateway on the motorway and getting lost in the outer industrial areas of Venlo we finally found the Perron 55, a nice club with a capacity of 300 people and a really comfortable small bar. Shortly after our arrival my two friends and I decided to tame the beast roaring in our stomachs and drove to a nearby McDonals “restaurant”.  

When we returned to the Perron 55 SPAWN OF POSSESSION were already onstage, the audience consisted at that time of 150 people and it was slowly warming up for the upcoming Death Metal assault. Meanwhile the Swedish technical Deathers allowed us to get a short yet impressive glimpse of their musical abilities and skilful play, that the band also documented with their latest album “Cabinet” on Unique Leader. Unfortunately we had missed a few songs of SPAWN OF POSSESSION’s set, but my hunger is usually stonger than my need to bang, sorry guys! 

I never had heard anything of INHUME before and my friend told me they would suck, but man, you were fucking wrong!!! INHUME unleashed a brutal and intense Death / Grind assault that simply blow me away! Especially the two merciless growling singers, whose optically difference was quite funny – Johan, a tall stouter guy and Joost, a smaller, athletic guy – gave INHUME an individual note. In my opinion Joost presented himself as the perfect frontman, agile, aggressive and bursting with energy. His wild stage acting and those karate jumps made me think of him as the “Bruce Lee of Death / Grind”. Two thumbs up also for the sound guy who made the double bass rip anything to shreds, killer! The audience had grown to 300 people, I guess, and INHUME’s great show was the first highlight of the evening. 

Now it was time for a drink to kill the waiting time for DISAVOWED, whom I anticipated the most today. When the band entered stage I got aware of the fact that the fantastic sound was as good and brutal as before and the double bass beat brutally on my cranium. DISAVOWED’s song material is excellent Live and the “hit” of the band - ‘Rhizome’ – was the highlight of their set. I only missed ‘Reason Rejected’, my  favourite song off “Perceptive Deception”, the band’s great full-length debut. Only vocalist Robbe K did not sound totally healthy and the relatively abrupt ending of the rather short gig made me think he got the flue or something. But fuck it, it was cool to see this band and I hope there will be a new album soon!  

MANGLED could not convince me right from the start, but certainly grew better towards the end of the gig, when they played some new material like the killer song ‘Abhorrence’! Although the club was filled with banging people and reached “sold out” status, the band’s mixture of old CANNIBAL CORPSE and BOLT THROWER did not really touch me. MANGLED’s enthusiam and energy onstage yet made their gig worth watching. We’ll see how their upcoming album turns out and if it can top the rather mediocre “Most Painful Ways”...  

Now it was time for the headliner: Bay Area brutalists VILE and hell, they did not disappoint!!! The band around Juan “the Ice T of Death Metal” Urteaga unleashed a violent storm of Californian brutal Death, that was much more intense than on their album releases. Although Juan’s announcements were a bit too much ghetto-style for me (“Yo Motherfuckers, I wanna see a fucking pit downthere!”), VILE’s musical qualities were simply awesome! New songs like ‘Butchered’ or ‘Depopulate’ got mixed with older stuff like ‘Surgery’ or ‘Terminal Existence’ and made the Perron 55 reach boiling point. Towards the end of the gig one could recognise that the audience got more and more exhausted and it was finally enough Death Metal for most of them, at least for today. What I found quite surprising was VILE’s AT THE GATES-cover, I think it was ‘Cold’, but I am not sure anymore. A special salute goes to one of VILE’s guitarists (Aaron I think), whose long hair got entangled in the strings of his guitar, but he continued playing, as if it was nothing. VILE definitely deserved their headliner status and I feel no wrong when I call those guys the highlight of the evening along with the fabulous INHUME.  

To sum it up the Venlo-gig of the “Violating Europe” Tour was my first concert highlight in 2003 and underlined with vehemence and relentless brutality the fact that the Death Metal underground is raging again and spawns talented new acts, whose qualities one witnessed in the Perron 55. Personally I still damn myself for having forgot my fucking photo camera, because some nice (exclusive) pictures of the show would have spiced up this live review. So if anyone has some shots of this gig please contact me per email, maybe I even have got a reward for you, we’ll see: stefan.franke-2@ruhr-uni-bochum.de If you would like to know more about the bands that violated Europe, check out the following weblinks: www.uniqueleader-europe.com (DISAVOWED, SPAWN OF POSSESSION),  www.listenable.net (VILE), www.inhume.nl and www.mangled.nl (MANGLED). Stay Brutal!!!

Stefan Franke