FINAL STRIKE
BLIKSEM is no more... Hail BLIKSEM. It could be the opening lines to an epos. But it is the grimm truth for Belgian metal band BLIKSEM. With one last hurah, they left the stage on february 17th. Surrounded by fans and fellow musicians.
But first, BARK was given the stage to try and lift the mood a bit. Some bands might hold back a bit, when opening a show as a support act. Not BARK. As soon as they walked on stage, they exploded. At times, I actually expected the frontmans head to lift of, and shoot for the moon. Sounding more refined then I remembered them, the band clearly grew up over the past few years. But nothing can hold them back. Nothing can disguise they hail from Antwerp. Nothing can disguise that city pretends to be the centre of the world. And BARK place themselves dead centre in the middle. With deep, carnal grunts, singer RON BRUYNSEELS keeps the crowds attention until the very last note. Or maybe, theywere just too scared to start running for their lives. Hell, I've seen headliners play with less force, less power, and less brutallity.
DISTILATOR is a different style of band completely. Where BARK seemed to aim for more carnal feelings, DISTILATOR aims more for epicness. And they do so with tons of passion, and an overload of proverbial fire. LAURENS H.'s high pitched vocals cleave through the night like a double-headed axe would cleave through my fat belly. With ease. In a whirlwind of fast guitarriffs and impressive blastbeats on the drums, they raise not only the temperature in TRIX, but they also try to lift the roof. And they damn near succeed. I'm sure they left that honour to the headliner. A mix of old and new songs, perfectly displaying LAURENS's ability to sream his lungs out, leads up to the final strike.
People start surfing the crowd, almost immediately. Moshpits are popping up, and grow to boiling cesspools of people giving it their all. At the same time, PEGGY MEEUSSEN is clearly touched on stage, when she recognizes so many familiar faces. This is it. This is the final strike. This is BLIKSEM. On stage. For the last time.
The whole band makes TRIX ecplode. Well warmed up by the previous bands, the crowd responds immediately. They answer every call. They bang their heads as if there were no tomorrow. They stretch the limits of what's phisically possible, to just enjoy every single moment of what will soon be history. A history that's written by PEGGY, JEROEN, TOON, Jan and ROB. A history that doesn't feel complete. If anything, it feels like a break. Maybe because of the unreal event of tonight. Unreal because the reality will sink in over days and weeks to come. BLIKSEM has strikken for the last time. Hail Bliksem.
TEXT and PHOTO'S: Wim Op de beeck
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