Echidna + Supports @ Thessaloniki, Greece

Tuesday, April 21st, 2009, posted by K.Panagiotis

Echidna
Building Chaos, Dustynation, Nyreid
Eightball Live Stage, Thessaloniki, Greece
29/03/09

I arrived at 8Ball Live Stage 30 minutes later than I was supposed to but the Echidna guys outside told me that the event had not started yet. I noticed something strange there. Their bassist Nikos a.k.a. Metaxas was absent and the Echidna guys informed me that they would perform without a bassist because Nikos could not come. Then We heard the first sounds of Nyreid and we decided to head in.

Nyreid is a 5 piece swedish death – thrash act from Athens. They had a set with their own songs and a couple of covers which they performed pretty well. Melodic death metal riffs combined with thrash drumlines. Impressing melodic ideas by the guys but a lot of work ahead of them. I personally will keep an eye on them in the future. They closed their set surprisingly for me with a song called “Never to Return” by german thrashers, Dew Scented.

And then there was Dustynation. I don’t know about the rest of the audience but they impressed me a lot because I didn’t expect them to be so good. I mean that I had heard things about these guys numerous times before but I never got to hear anything from them and by the time they finished their set I was like “Where was I all these times they performed live, and why I don’t have their demo ?” Anyway, the 5 guys jumped onstage and they gave everything they had. And they had a lot to give. A killer singer that was very confident about himself – great guy -, very good Opeth-like compositions that looked like they had been worked for a long time and some well-picked covers. They finished their set with a very good cover of “Deliverance” by Opeth. Anyway, if you ever have the chance of getting close to these guys (nothing sexual!) just do it and you won’t regret. Great work guys, keep it up.

The next band was Building Chaos, 4 hairy boys from Athens. While they were onstage I listened some good ol’ usual thrashy stuff and they also covered “Fucking Hostile” of Pantera. Very usual band obviously influenced by the 90’s thrash stuff that was going on these days. They were onstage for about 45 minutes and they made a quite good impression to the audience. In fact they did warm up the club for …

Echidna… Ok, here in Thessaloniki most people have heard of these guys, but I urge you to go out and see them performing live. With an absence on the bass the remaining 4 guys would obviously had to struggle in order to maintain the balance onstage. But I don’t think the audience cared about this stuff. Echidna went onstage and gave a bone crushing performance to the audience. The 4 musicians produced a very thick wall of progressive death metal and proved to everyone why they are considered to be one of the best progressive death metal acts around. They performed songs from their upcoming album which will be ready around summer (and will kick some very serious ass), some songs from their demo and also 2 Death Covers. The echidna guys seemed ountouchable by the time they had to take off in order to fulfill their military obligations. I am ready to see great things by this band. I wish them the best.

Vasilis “Sysfail” Kapitanidis.

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