Pentagram / Nebukadnezza / Sower

Camden Underworld, London

21 Jul 2009
 

Opening the night on the wrong foot was Sower who sort of reminded me of a thrashier, deathier version of Pantera.  Sure they put on a decent performance but in the end musically it was not my cup of tea. and none of the songs stayed with me longer than the end of their set.

Taking the stage next was Nebukadnezza who I had seen for the first time at a gig with Nocturnal.  I was thoroughly unimpressed that night but tonight they sounded better, tighter, and they put on a pretty good performance which was lively and they displayed really good stage presence.  My main problem with Nebukadnezza is that their music sounds choppy.  The songs don't have a lot of flow to them.  Now that may not be the case on CD but in person I cannot seem to get into what they are doing for more than a few riffs before they break into something completely jarring which throws off the song's natural flow.  Oh well, the locals seem to dig them.

Perhaps the problem in retrospect was that both of those bands were completely blown away by the night's headliners.  PEntagram aggressively attacked all their material and each song was instantly recognizable.  Anton is a tremendous front man and played up to the audience and even catered to the Spanish speaking members in attendance.  One highlight was when they played Temple of Perdition as a tribute to their fallen bassist, Alfredo.  They closed out their normal set with Demonic Possession and the crowd went nuts.  Though there were not a huge amount of people there, it was one of the most violent pits I have seen at the Underworld.  Having exhausted their own material, for their encore Pentagram played three cover songs starting with Slayer and ending with Venom's Countess Bathory.  One issue that Pentagram suffered from though was the vocals were too low and were really a problem during the encore.