Zeal and Ardor, a band that I heard a lot of, although never took the time to check them out what they are all about. I was surprised when they opened their set. Sounded very refreshing, three singers, now that would be nice to hear. The black metal connection that is often referred to with this band wasn’t noticeable at all. Sometimes I heard a lot of influences of Pain of Salvation, so very nice. Although the singer mentioned that his voice wasn’t top that evening, he has done an excellent job. The sound was perfect and the audience loved the performance. I only give a 3 ½ stars because on the long run, they played for only one hour and it was already sometimes becoming “hey I heard this before”. I would love to see the progressive elements that they are sometimes using becoming more profound in their music and do something more wicked with the three voices. Nevertheless, they did one hell of a job.

During the changeover we got some nice music offered in the way of metal classics that have gone through an Atari time machine, we were just missing Mario and his friends. The audience was going wild when the lights were dimmed and began chanting ‘Meshuggah‘. You could sense that this would be an evening not to forget. With the opener ‘Broken Cog’ it became immediately clear that this production is top notch, a perfect sound and a light show that just blew you away. Flashing red ‘Immutable’ banners with every member standing in front of one, which was a nice visual element to see. The light show was very tightly arranged to the music they were bringing and that’s not easy to do, very impressed what they have done here. Back to the music. We know Meshuggah doesn’t jump around on stage or have much interaction with the audience. They just do what they do, bring us tightly played not so easy listening music. With songs from their already big back catalogue and from time to time a change of banners on the background, they took you on a ride throughout the history of the band. The setlist was well chosen, never a boring moment. And with the two encores, ‘Demiurge’ and ‘Future Breed Machine’, the audience got to chance to let all the energy loose.