Except for her work with MaYaN, we haven’t heard from Merel Bechtold anymore since she stopped with Purest Of Pain and also left Delain…. until now! Together with Joey De Boer (also ex-Delain, on the drums, who, unfortunately couldn’t play this show because of an injury)  she looked for (and found) David Pear, to join them as a singer in their new metalcore band Dear Mother!

Their first album, Bulletproof, was independently released on July 16, 2021, but thanks to corona we had to wait until now to hear it live. Only 2 shows to officially show it to the world, one in Belgium and one in The Netherlands, but I’m sure more will follow soon!

They pulled off a great show, until their last song. It started off solid but didn’t last long. Problems with the electricity meant that after about ten seconds we could only hear the drums anymore, until the drummer realized that he should stop too. The electricity had gone out, the whole venue was in the dark… It was quickly fixed, but it came back also quickly! Up to 3 times they tried again but each time the power went out. Unfortunately they had to stop like this, it promised to be a great finish, but there was nothing they could do about it… that’s the risk if you play on a Friday the 13th I guess?

Warm up act was none other than the Belgian band Cellar Twins! Founded in 2014 in Namur, they are also very promising! We recently had the chance to see them live on the Durbuy rock festival, and next year they will be at the ‘Apocalypse in the desert metal festival’ in Las Vegas! No need to doubt it, we will be hearing more from them in the future!