Here on the first day of Hypocrisy’s Long Time, No Death... tour a quick change had been made to the line-up of bands. Danish hardcore/thrash band Hatesphere were supposed to be supporting, but for reasons unknown they decided to drop out of the entire tour.
In came Drone, a German thrash metal act (or 101% neo-sexmetal in their own words), to fill their place for the night here in Hamburg.

I didn’t know Drone from before, and the first thing to hit me about the band was that their vocalist/guitarist Mutz bore quite a resemblance to Rob Flynn of Machine Head. In fact, their music turned out to be in quite the same vein as well, and as I do enjoy Machine Head from time to time this was fine with me.
A good thing was that the energy Drone was displaying was on the same level as the aforementioned band; the only problem was that the intensity was not reflected in the already large crowd.
Although the room was almost filled (though not exactly packed yet), it was only the immediate front ho were showing some appreciation. The largest cheer came when they started their song Welcome To The Pit of with the all too familiar intro-riff from Eye Of The Tiger; this was humour the Hamburg crowd could relate to!
After this people started to warm up more and more to the band, it went slow but it happened none the less. The fact that Mutz showed an interest in talking with the audience between songs and answering their comments with a smile on his lips (I can’t relate what was said, as it was all in German) surely helped as well.
In Theopractical the band released the last restraints and really let the shit hit the fan; Mutz was jumping high and marching around the stage as Marcelo (guitar) and Martin (bass) were headbanging as if there was no tomorrow; in fact, for them there wasn’t, as this was the only show they were participating in on the tour.

After the last note rang out, we were given a short thank you and then the band was quick to leave the stage. Actually, throughout it all had felt a bit rushed, but I suppose that it could not be avoided given the circumstances...
This was not the last we would see of the band however, as they came back to pick up their gear drummer Felix honoured some of the screaming fans in the front with throwing a set of drumsticks to them.

Although Drone lay a bit outside the rest of the bands this night music-ways, I still enjoyed their show a lot, and thought they provided a good support for Hypocrisy.

Setlist:

Stampmark
Boneless
Welcome To The Pit
The Set-Up
Theopractical
Piss Drunk