On Saturday August 25th Carnation walked straight out of their Chapel of Abhorrence to the stage of venue “De Klinker” in Aarschot, Belgium. Here they played all tracks of their new album for the very first time. It was clear Belgium had been waiting for this. Fans of all metal subgenres were there, confirmed the show being sold out. “Chapel of Abhorrence” is only their debut album and already released via Season of Mist. Later I’ll explain why this doesn’t surprise me much. It’s easy to say their release show was one of the highlights of the year for the Belgian metal scene. Other bands who played a big part in this were Schizophrenia, Lemuria, Bütcher and Warbringer.
Lemuria (*** 1/2) was on next. Normally I’m not such a fan of symphonic black, but like many others I was curious to see them play with their new vocalist, Daan, who used to be part of the belgian thrash band, called Bloodrocuted. His previous band split up earlier last year, after releasing their well praised album, called For The Dead Travel Fast. Lemuria’s new album will be released later this year. The album was tracked at Project Zero Recording Studio, which consists out of two Carnation-members, and later landed in the hands of one of them, Yarne Heylen.
The third band to play was Bütcher (****), who obviously sounded way better live than on their 2017-debut album, Bestial Fükkin’ Warmachine. Seeing them blew me away. Think about a mix of Judas Priest and Celtic Frost and you get that Bütcher sound. Add aggression, leather and steel to that and you have the perfect image of them playing this release show in your head. The crowd went wild and everyone around me seemed to know their songs and lyrics out of their head. Bütcher knew how to get the party started before Carnation began rocking the stage.
In the intro I already mentioned they are signed under Season of Mist. The label also released some videoclips of them, like for the title track and an other one for Sermon of the Dead. The crowd went crazy when Carnation played these tracks live, everyone seemed to already recognize these tracks when they started playing the first few seconds of them. They clearly have a lot of fans in their home country. When they ended their set, people were asking for an encore. So they came back on stage and started playing one of their first tracks ever written. For us Belgians this is already considered a classic and then it became even wilder in Aarschot. People were moshing and shouting along. At the end of the night all there was left were some explosive cadavers and Carnation made sure they had plenty of choice when it came to shirts.
Setlist:
The Whisperer
Hellfire
Chapel of Abhorrence
The Unconquerable Sun
Disciples of Bloodlust
Hatred Unleashed
Plaguebreeder
Magnum Chaos
Sermon of the Dead
Fathomless Depths
Power Trip
Necromancer
Explosive Cadavers (encore)
Warbringer (****) made a stop to Aarschot during their summer tour with Sepultura, so they could close this show for their friends in Carnation. Most of the people might already know them since they’ve been thrashing out since 2004. After releasing Woe to the Vanquished and ending up very high in many best-albums-of-the-year-lists last year, Belgium was ready to welcome them with open arms. Warbringer also made sure they were able to hook up every fan with their new single, Power Unsurpassed, released on wax (7-inch). Fast, faster, fastest and extremely catchy! Who really caught my attention during this set was their drummer, Carlos Cruz. Like many other OSDM fans, I already knew him as the former drummer of Skeletal Remains. Currently he’s working on a new record with the one and only Chris Poland (ex-Megadeth), which will be mindblowing, I’m sure.
As you can see these bands are all on top of their game and made sure this release show became an unforgettable night for many of us. Last but not least a special shout out to Bob Briessinck, the sound engineer who also played an important role in making this show so great.
Support your locals!
Pictures taken by René Verschelde, Walter Verheyden and Tomy Devogelaere.