Less than a week after returning from Darkness Rising Festival, we shipped south, towards Santa Maria Summer Fest, in Beja, Alentejo.
Besides the good line up that the organization was able to join, this event had another natural advantage: the entrance was for free, to everyone. So, naturally, you could see all genres of metalheads, from lots of underground punks, to black metalers and common, curious Beja inhabitants. The result turned out to be quite interesting.
DAY 1
The festival started with experimental black metalers ALCHEMIST, playing their usual good paced set, benefiting from their musicians experience to grab the audience’s attention, in an always difficult daylight performance. Set list: “Decadence of Light”, “Torn”, “The Unbearable Void”, “Liberation”, “Jnana” and “Procreation of the Wicked”.
After them, we were quite interested in take the first live contact with Portuguese Wacken Metal battle winners UTOPIUM. And our curiosity was fully justified after an intense performance of something like Rotten Sound meets AmenRa, with really strong bass chords and sreamo vocals, mixing their grind and sludge core together.
Locals HO CHI MIN played at home, and surprised those who didn’t know them with their mix of Nu and Industrial metal.
Alchemist
Utopium
Austrians VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxC duo opened the party floor, and putted everyone dancing and slaming to the sounds of their swinish guttural party grind. The circle pit kept live from the beginning till the end of the concert. And all the music intros had old school kids classics remixes and we got astonished with the crowd’s reaction to every intro, dancing like if there was no tomorrow. These Austrians seem to be real sick fucks.
Then black punk GOATFUKK played the first live gig with original vocalist W., after several live apparitions with other guys taking that role [Vulturius (Irae) and J.G. (Alchemist)]. The sound quality was pretty good and the Exploited cover “Chaos is My Life” was the final attribute to a contagious gig, that counted with J.G. intervention in two tracks.
VxPxOxAxAxWxAxMxC
Goatfukk
THE SORCERER has returned, to play this live gig after decades of non-activity. And we got impressed by the pace, rhythmic section, and lyrical themes that the band presented. Maybe J.G. (Alchemist), J. (Corpus Christii) and Rolando Barros (Grog) helped a lot to create that sound quality, but that’s just a reminder of the frontman (only original member) good taste. Maybe their black metal sounded rolled in some parts, but it will be good news for everyone if they keep on performing live. It was quite an impressive first show.
For the final act, GROG played their second gig of that night, after the prior one, in another metal festival, in Setubal. Congrats to Mr. Roland Barros, that, besides that show, didn’t seem to be tired from The Sorcerer’s exhibition. This Lisbon’s leading grind core metalers were able to return with a violent mosh pit and a well choose set of themes that closed vibrantly that first night.
The Sorcerer
Grog
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