Abbath / Toxic Holocaust / Hellripper @ De Casino

Concertvenue ‘De Casino’ is a beautiful musichall with a capacity of about 600 people. On January 24th 2024, Abbath’s Dead Reaver Over Europe tour landed here. The Scottish Hellripper was the opener of the evening. If you’ve never heard of them, Hellripper plays blackened speed metal with a good dose of thrash. It’s the project of guitarist/vocalist James McBain and was responsible for one of the best albums of 2023: ‘Warlocks Grim & Weathered Hags’.

They’ve been touring heavily recently. Supporting Midnight on a European tour last summer and now following this up with Abbath’s massive 31-date tour.

The stage wasn’t exceptionally deep, and the drumriser was reserved for Abbath later in the evening. This made that the drummer for Hellripper, and later Toxic Holocaust, was quite close to the front of the stage.

Hellripper started the set with ‘Spectres of the Blood Moon Sabbath’ and didn’t take long to get the moshpit going. A couple of songs in, they needed to take a short break due to an injury in the moshpit. Luckily it was nothing serious and they could continue their ravaging assault.

I’ve seen Hellripper last year, and they were just as good now, perhaps even with a bit more stage presence. I’m looking forward to seeing them again in a couple of months at Huggins Awakening Fest.

After a very quick teardown and setup of about 15 minutes, it was time for Joel Grind’s Toxic Holocaust to take the stage. The US band brings a fairly modern take on thrash metal with quite a punky atmosphere. The pit that was started by Hellripper continued here and the band went through a selection of fast, thrashy songs with some seriously catchy choruses.

It seemed that especially Joel Grind himself, combining bass and vocals, enjoyed himself out there, which I always find a good way to bring over the enthousiasm to the crowd.

After 2 whirlwind thrash metal acts, it was time for Headliner Abbath to take the stage. He played in the same venue last month, with his coverband Bömbers. Now he’s back with his solo-project, playing a mix of songs from these albums and Immortal classics like ‘One By One’ and ‘Tyrants’.

The stage presence, headbanging and crabwalks accentuated his somewhat silly character, but both Abbath himself and the rest of the band were on fire, playing with ferocious intensity but also impeccable precision. The crowd again took it all in, occasionally forming more moshpits and headbanging to their hearts content.


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