Legion Of The Damned

Metalcamp - 2011

Text: Tobias Nilsson Photo: Lunah Lauridsen

We’ve had plenty of opportunities to see the Dutch thrash/death metal band Legion Of The Damned in the past but we’ve never quite gotten round to it due to various reasons. Now, here at Metalcamp, no interruptions stood in our way and it was finally time...

After a lengthy intro declaring this to be the age of war, mass executions and other bad stuff the band came on and quickly laid down some brutally heavy riffs which underlined what had just been said. I have later learned that the intro was Descent Into Chaos, the same as on their latest eponymous album, and as the old rule of playing the first thing off your latest album first held up, the riffing came of course from Night Of The Sabbath...
After (and including) this the band used their ca. one hour long stage time to sonically defile us with everything from kick-the-shit-out-of-you speed monsters to more groovy mid-tempo molesting.
The grounds may not have been completely filled up but the crowd was still impressive in size, and the furious onslaught of the music made the fans kick up a giant dust cloud as they were moshing wildly into the oncoming night, and when the finale was drawing near vocalist Maurice ‘Sephirot’ Swinkels thought it appropriate to call out for a wall of death, something which the fans were more than willing to provide him with in a big way!

So, the fans and the music was a lively combo, but what about the band then?
Well, the members of the band were actually taking the backseat of this ride, and even though there was a certain amount of headbanging going on, they were just as certainly the calmest ones present at the show. Swinkels walked around a bit on the stage as he bellowed out the lyrics, but other than that there wasn’t a whole lot going on; they were obviously letting the music itself do the talking. Not that this in itself was a problem, but the show would have been even more capturing if they could walk the walk as well as they talked the talk.
Still, Swinkels was grateful to the fans and thanked them a lot; and for good reason, this was after all Legion Of The Damned’s third visit to Metalcamp (which again brings up the question of why I haven’t checked them out earlier...).
The fans weren’t the only ones getting mentioned either; the brand new guitarist Twan Van Geel got an especially warm welcome as this was not only his first visit here with the band, but it was also his birthday!

The set was a nice mix from both new and not quite as new material, and even though I don’t know much of their music, and even though Swinkels wasn’t much for introducing titles, I could still follow some of the material.
Admittedly, their style wasn’t exactly something which got my juices flowing but I can’t deny that they certainly had a certain flair for what they were doing and I can understand why fans of this strength of metal would fall for it.

Setlist (incomplete):

Descent Into Chaos
Night Of The Sabbat
Legion Of The Damned
Death’s Head March
Killzone
Son Of The Jackal
Holy Blood, Holy War

Latest uploads: