After playing the main hall at the Trix on the Samhain festival and a stint on Roadburn, Pothamus has returned to a more intimate, smaller venue. Individual songs don’t really matter on a performance of theirs, it’s all about creating an almost ritualistic atmosphere. Don’t expect them to go “Scream for me, Sint Niklaas” or “Are you ready for some drone shit? I can’t hear youuuuu!!!” As funny as that would be, it wouldn’t work. In fact, don’t expect these guys to interact with the audience at all. That’s kept for the merch table afterwards. The music will do all the interaction. And it will, if you open yourself up to it. You need to allow yourself to be fully immersed in these droning waves of shit heavy guitars surfing on Dead Can Dance like tribal rhythms to enter a trance-like state. This takes a special kind of audience, not the kind that just chugs down beer and cracks jokes with their mates during the concert. It’s an individual, wordless experience that is shared between the attending audience and the band.

For most attendees, it probably won’t have been the first time they’ve seen the local heroes from Mechelen that form Pothamus. DVNE might be another matter, though. This is truly the novelty for this evening. Even though the band moniker is inspired, obviously, by the books from Frank Herbert, that’s where the comparison stops. None of their songs are about Arrakis, giant slugs or spice. No, in fact, they’re way more interesting than just reusing an existing currently very popular franchise.

Their albums are all linked together in their own original science fiction story set on a distant planet. Distilling the story out of the songs is not so easy and would probably deserve a separate article in its own right. For the gig tonight, it’s also not really needed to enjoy the songs. Just something that’s fun to dive into whilst you’re listening to their albums with the headphones on.

Slowly unfolding a sci-fi fantasy story across each album is about as prog as it gets, DVNE , however, is a lot heavier than your average Dream Theater or Rush. Despite the proggy ambitions, at its heart this a heavy sludge band. Think Neurosis, Baronness or even early Mastodon before they disappeared up their own arsehole.

These 5 lads from Edinburgh are down to their third album ‘Voidkind’, which was amply represented tonight as those songs have a bit more immediacy to them and work out really well in a live setting. The band sport no less than three vocalists, sharing post metal growls and clean vocals alike, although I must admit that these latter ones don’t come across as strongly tonight as in the studio.

Nevertheless, the band is on fire tonight, visibly elated to play in this realm for the first time. 2 quite different bands on display here, the first one creating vast expanses of space through ritualistic minimalism, the other one landing on a planet far far way somewhere.