Somehow, it was really badly advertised that this show wasn’t just Grave Pleasures celebrating the release of their latest album. We were surprised to see a smaller drum kit set up right at the front of the stage when we got to the venue, and quite soon a to us unknown entity called Dome Runner mounted the stage. And man, what a surprise it was! Musically, nothing even remotely close to what Grave Pleasures is like, with the exception that there are guitars and drums used. What we got was a massive wrecking ball of the kind of filthy industrial metal you feel permeating every fiber of your body and makes your bones tremble. Noisy, volatile and absolutely oppressive, like a sludgy hardcore-tinged mix of Nine Inch Nails and old school Ministry. This is the kind of different and destructive music that we highly appreciate from time to time, especially in a live setting, caught completely unaware. Epic!

When it was time for Grave Pleasures to hit the stage, the collective of talented and experienced musicians came on, got to their instruments, and without further ado kicked off with ‘Disintegration Girl’ and ‘Heart Like A Slaughterhouse‘, the 2 opening tracks of ‘Plagueboys‘. What followed was over an hour of highly danceable and extremely catchy gothic tinged post-punk with somewhat of a sense of danger, like only Grave Pleasures does. We were shot straight back to the eighties, the heydays of music like this, and absolutely loved it. Frontman Mat McNerny has a voice that is a match made in heaven for this kind of music, and his dance moves on stage while singing brings a certain rock ‘n’ roll energy to the performance that is great. Since this was a celebration of the release of ‘Plagueboys‘ a week earlier, we got a bunch more tracks from the album like ‘High On Annihilation‘, ‘Imminent Collapse‘, ‘Lead Balloons‘, ‘Plagueboys‘, and ‘Tears on the Camera Lens‘. Basically, half of the setlist was filled with tracks from the new album. The other half of the set was a fine selection of earlier work and fan favorites like ‘Be My Hiroshima‘, ‘Deadenders‘ and ‘Joy Through Death‘. A quite diverse crowd was clearly vibing with the music, as we saw people of all ages and walks of life dancing to the gloomy, yet catchy music. A great concert to get our weekend kicked off nicely!