craning their necks to see further into the centre of the fog, were probably debating jumping over and rushing the stage. The row of eight security guards stood firm to discourage that notion.
A hand suddenly punched out of the mist, apparently rising out of the floor in a reach for the sky, fingers clasping and flexing in the air.
The unexpected appearance of the limb, which caused more than a handful of unsuspecting onlookers to jump in a startled fashion, was followed by another, clawing its way up from a false floorboard, a ghastly appendage that seemed to be dripping gore and greenish slime.
The glow of illumination brightened a little more, enough to allow those with the better view of the stage to witness a similar grotesquely splattered head emerge, then shoulders, a bulky muscled upper torso, and then the complete body of Undead Fleshcrave frontman SamEdi lurching out of the gap created in the floor. Even black metal freak Seth knew enough to realise where the band's vocalist had appropriated his moniker from, but right now the beefy Undead Fleshcrave head honcho didn't look at all like the sinister top-hatted Baron; he looked a lot more like one of the risen dead, a shambling zombie oozing gruesome stagnant slimy material and blood. His eyes rolled crazily around in their sockets as he lurched through the green-tinted fog to the front of the stage, baring his teeth in a grimace.
A muted wall of guitar issued from somewhere behind him, frenetic and rapid in tempo.
All of a sudden the volume intensified immensely as the wall came down behind SamEdi and there were the rest of the band on the proper stage behind him, wielding their respective instruments as though they were weapons.
Behind an enormous drum kit with two 22 x 18 kick drums, a host of toms, a couple of snares, and a load of Sabian cymbals was sticksman GatlingGrinder seated up on a platform higher than the rest of the band, who spanned out behind SamEdi.
They moved up to flank the vocalist, rhythm guitarist The Deadwalker and bassist FaceGnawer on his right, and lead guitarist SkinCarver on his left, this trio of axe-wielders attacking their stringed instruments with savage vigour.
A huge punishing surge of aural violence emanated as the guitarists ripped out a low-ended chugging riff that rode atop a barrage of battery from Grinder, bolstered by the thick pulsing rhythm of FaceGnawer. Even in this intro section of the track 'Buried Beneath Bones' the drums were brutal and relentless; forget blast beats, some of the work from the skinsman was gravity beats. This track piqued the attention of the crowd and the fans were going nuts instantly; after all, this was the one the band posted all over the internet in conjunction with the bloodthirsty video clip and anyone who knew anything about the band were familiar with at least this composition.
All members of the band were splattered and adorned with the bloody splashes and green slime-like substance, making each one of them look like refugees from some particularly nasty zombie movie, but they didn't move in slow shambling motions.
They windmilled in perfect unison, the two longhaired guitarists hurling their matted locks in great spirals, the bald bassist banging his chrome dome in tandem also.
SamEdi gave voice to a feral cavernous growl that sounded as though it had risen up from some deep dank cave far underground, possibly the same place the green slimy stuff should have come from, and then began to bubble lyrics through the mire of muscular death metal instrumentation.
The pit was already seething with activity; head-banging, moshing, fans hurling themselves against the barricades, fists and metal horns raised in the
Janwillem van de Wetering