We were now well into the second day, and it was time for Rapid Dominance, yet another Danish band (they all were this day).
Rapid Dominance, who have earlier gone by the name Slay The Shepherd, play in their own words “Prog tech groovy thrash” which describes it pretty well I’d say. Well, actually their own words are “Fuck genres, it’s just METAL!”, but we’ll let that lie for now...

For a reason I didn’t understand at the time, frontman Adel Haley spoke English to us even though the band stood as being Danish in the program. Afterwards I have found out that Haley is in fact not from Denmark, but originates from Baghdad, Iraq, and only moved here in 2008. Two years later the band was formed, and two years after that they were playing at the Dark Mental Festival (that’s now, if you didn’t keep up with the math).
Even though the band opened strong, the crowd wasn’t very big in the beginning of the show and even less active. Haley and his band-mates didn’t go easy on us for that sake, thankfully, and with a lively performance which reached across the edge of the stage they managed to pull more people in and get a bit of headbanging going on as well.

“We’re all here, so let’s have some fun!”
- Adel Haley (guitar/vocals)

Yes, the performance got across the stage alright, sometimes more literally than at other times as Haley gave the by now well-tried trick of jumping off the stage and playing in the audience a go.
This sort of behaviour was welcomed by the audience which was happy to join in on the fun now that it came straight in its face like this. The rest of the band was mostly headbanging, but as with Roarback before them the attitude was there and this helped the show along. Especially drummer Asmus Høyrup played with such intensity it could nearly be felt across the room.
That Rapid Dominance’s show was working could easily be heard towards the end, where even though they had had a small and uninterested crowd to work with as they came on, they now had a crowd which was willing to shout for an encore when Haley asked if we could take any more. Ending the show was the first song the band ever wrote, Merciless, and as Haley put it; ”...so it sucks”. He quickly changed his opinion about this though, and as the song commenced we were given one last ripping thrash song to take with us.

Even if the band on paper doesn’t want to conform to a specific genre, what they gave us at Dark Mental Festival was thrash with a capitol T. They weren’t exactly reinventing the spoon or anything, but they delivered a good performance which got the audience (myself included) in a good mood, and was together with Roarback one of the highlights of the day.

Setlist:

Inheritance Of Suffering
Sanctuary
The Antagonist
To Die A Martyr
Constrictor
Spirit Crusher (Death cover)
Imminent Threat
Merciless